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Given that war has broken out in the fight for our marijuana freedoms as we face a multi-state threat from the so-called ‘recreational marijuana’ and their neo-conservative corporate consortium partners, we have decided to introduce a new series called ‘Law and Order’ where we openly contend that the Drug War itself is unconstitutional. We will present to you cases from the past few decades that slowly but surely eroded the rights and freedoms that We The People of America have guaranteed in our Bill of Rights and Constitution of the United States, in the name of an unholy cause called the War on Drugs.

The War on Drugs is an institution that was designed for one purpose: profit. To profit off of wars both legal and illegal, the jailing of citizens, the seizure of property, the suffering of the people, the destruction of families, the oppression of neighborhoods and the expansion of empire. No other institution has so effectively concentrated wealth at the top in the history of man, than the Leviathan that has emerged comprising of Cartels, Corporations and Government.

Best Nixon

The origin of the War on Drugs is based in the oligarchical reaction to the American counter-culture that had emerged against the War in Vietnam and the destabilizing effect the war in Vietnam had on the US economy. While narco-warfare had been previously used in World War II and the topic of drug control had existed in the political realm for over 100 years, it wasn’t made intrinsic again until the Vietnam War and the creation of the War on Drugs. When Richard Nixon came to office in 1968, several correlated events took place within the White House:

The Consortium formed by John Foster Dulles and Allen Dulles after World War 2 had been brought back into power post-JFK. The same group had attempted to drive the Cuban Missile Crisis years before and had employed CIA operation J/M-Wave to assassinate President Kennedy.

CIA shipments of heroin during the Vietnam War by former members of Operation Jedburgh to the United States, proved profitable in funding unauthorized wars in Cambodia and Laos that Nixon could not obtain through a Democratic Congress.

The United States after 1969 began to lose its financial capacity to maintain the war in Vietnam. Nixon, in order to drive up the price of marijuana and heroin to increase war profits instigated Operation Intercept. The heroin epidemic started in Hells Kitchen raised enough money off the books to continue the war well into 1972.

Heroin sales were compounded by Nixon taking the dollar off the gold standard in 1971 allowing the drug money to be laundered into the economy. Nixon would later convince China to agree to the outsourcing of American jobs in return for cheaper goods undermining American labor to allow for a retaking of the US economy by the Consortium.

Nixon, the CIA and DEA utilized the same drugs for weapons tactics to reassert US hegemony in South America, overthrowing socialist governments and replacing them with narco-dictatorships backed by the military. This effectively established the modern cocaine trade through empowering Cartel families in Mexico, Panama, Peru and Colombia. Originally the most powerful operator was the Guadalajara Cartel, managed by the CIA, Rafael Quintero and Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo.

The cocaine trade rapidly expanded into the 1980’s with civil wars in Central America being funded by a drugs-for-arms scheme that cemented the relationship between the US government, the cartels and American corporations. Cocaine shipments would leave Colombia through Panama, be facilitated by Contras through Central America, to Mexico and be flown by plane into private military airports guaranteed by then Governor Bill Clinton in Arkansas.

The large glut of cocaine, encouraged the creation of the Crack Cocaine epidemic which started in 1984 and was fueled in large part by the trafficking of cocaine by Nicaraguan Contras and Manuel Noriega with the support of the CIA and DEA.

DEA agent Enrique Camarena would be murdered by the Guadalajara Cartel, Mexican Police and several DEA and CIA agents for disrupting drug flows, setting off an investigation that would eventually lead to the Iran-Contra Affair and the exposure of the international narcotics system.

The epidemic continued until George HW Bush invaded Panama in 1989 to shut down Noriega’s operation which had been supported by the US since the 1970’s.

The fall of Noriega followed suit with the takedown of Pablo Escobar who had become the richest man in the world at the time through cocaine sales ($66 billion in 1991). The fall of Pablo was effectively the end of the Colombian reign as power would shift to Mexican Cartels with DEA support.

The fall of the Arellano-Felix cartel, the successor to the Guadalajara Cartel, in the late 90s and early 2000’s, created a fractured power vacuum in Mexico that was heavily manipulated by Consortium and federal agency interests that has led to Mexico and Canada being the drug trafficking gatekeepers to the US that we have today. The power vacuum has since been filled by El Chapo and the Sinaloa Cartel, Los Zetas, the Gulf Cartel and several other small organizations.

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The Murder of Enrique Camarena in 1984

DEA Agent Enrique Camarena

This first article talks about the significance of a court case related to the death of DEA agent Enrique Camarena-Salazar in 1984. Camarena had been responsible for the destruction of a 2,500 acre marijuana farm, with a production value of $8 billion. The marijuana farm was controlled by the CIA backed Guadalajara Cartel and its overlord Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo. Camarena was tortured at Gallardo’s ranch by Dr. Humberto Alvarez Machain, CIA Agent Rafael Caro Quintero, and two crooked DEA agents who had dimed out Camarena for the bust. Quintero was the co-founder of the Guadalajara Cartel with Gallardo and been an integral part in providing funding from drug sales to the Nicaraguan Contras for Col. Oliver North and the CIA.

Rafael Caro Quintero

Quintero’s wiki:

“The Guadalajara Cartel prospered largely because it enjoyed the protection of the intelligence agency then known as Dirección Federal de Seguridad (DFS-Federal Security Directorate) under its chief Miguel Nassar Haro, a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) agent.

His cartel was also benefited by the CIA for having connections with the Honduran drug lord Juan Matta-Ballesteros, who, according to a 1983 U.S. Customs Investigative Report, was the head of the SETCO airline, a corporation that was used for smuggling narcotics into the United States. According to the Kerry Committee report, the SETCO airline was “the principal company used by the Contras in Honduras to transport supplies and personnel for the [FDN (one of the earliest Contra groups)], carrying at least a million rounds of ammunition, food, uniforms, and other military supplies [for the Contras] . . . from 1983 through 1985.”For its services SETCO received funds from the accounts established by Oliver North.

His partner and cartel co-founder, Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo, provided a significant amount of funding, weapons, and other aid to the Contras in Nicaragua. Gallardo’s pilot, Werner Lotz stated that Gallardo once had him deliver $150,000 in cash to a Contra group, and Gallardo often boasted about smuggling arms to them. His activities were known to several U.S. federal agencies, including the CIA and DEA, but he was granted immunity due to his “charitable contributions to the Contras.

Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo

Caro Quintero has also been accused of involvement in the murder of US Drug Enforcement Administration agent Enrique Camarena Salazar. In November 1984, the Mexican authorities raided a 220-acre ranch known as El Búfalo in the state of Chihuahua, owned by Caro Quintero. The authorities reportedly burned more than 10,000 tons of marijuana – totaling a loss of around $160 million.

Camarena Salazar, who had been working undercover in Mexico, was said to be responsible for leading the authorities to the ranch. This allegedly prompted Caro Quintero and other high-ranking members of the Guadalajara Cartel to seek revenge against the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and Camarena. In retribution, Camarena and his pilot Alfredo Zavala Avelar were allegedly kidnapped in Guadalajara on 7 February 1985 and brutally tortured and murdered. Caro Quintero allegedly buried the two bodies in a clandestine grave in the state of Michoacán. He then left Mexico on 9 March 1985 with his associates and his girlfriend Sara Cristina Cosío Gaona. Former Mexican Judicial Police chief Armando Pavón Reyes reportedly allowed Caro Quintero to flee from the airport in Guadalajara to seek refuge in Costa Rica in a private jet after paying a $300,000 bribe. The police chief was fired shortly afterwards and was charged with bribery and complicity in the Camarena murder.”

Camarena had been brutally interrogated and tortured, kept alive during the torture by Dr. Humberto Alvarez Machain’s application of methamphetamine and other drugs to maintain Camarena’s consciousness. His body was found in Michoacan and triggered the largest DEA homicide investigation in US history, known as Operation Leyenda. Rafael Quintero and his partner, Ernesto Carrillo were arrested for the murder with great controversy, with Felix Gallardo being protected from prosecution by the Mexican President Miguel de la Madrid.

Dr. Humberto Alvarez Machain

The DEA, in vengeance, hired bounty hunters to abduct Dr. Humberto Machain and four other defendants to bring to trial in the early 1990’s despite vigorous protests of the Mexican government in regards to violation of the Extradition Treaty in 1978. The case became significant when Dr. Machain sued the US government for abducting a Mexican citizen in good standing in violation of the extradition treaty. In a high controversial 5-4 decision, the Republican Supreme Court ruled that Alvarez was NOT entitled to relief and that the President ultimately had the right to violate congressional treaties in the interest of national security.

The other four abductee’s were convicted as well, many of them had ties to the current and former Mexican Presidents and had been implicated in using Mexican police to help cover up the murder and destroy evidence. In October 2013, two former federal agents and an ex-CIA agent admitted that the CIA had been directly involved in Camarena’s murder because the Guadalajara Cartel’s marijuana and cocaine operations were integral to funding the overthrow of government’s in Central America.

“New revelations suggest that Caro Quintero may have not been the only one responsible for the gruesome murder. Another figure has surfaced in the case, Félix Ismael “El Gato” Rodríguez, a Cuban exile who participated in the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961. El Gato has also been linked to the 1967 ambush of Ernesto “Che” Guevara in Bolivia.

CIA Agent Felix Rodriguez

These CIA-connection claims are now being brought to light by Phil Jordan, the former director of DEA’s powerful El Paso Intelligence Center in Texas; former DEA agent Héctor Berrellez; and Tosh Plumlee, who maintained he was hired to fly covert missions on behalf of US intelligence. The three men spoke to Fox News in exclusive interviews broadcast last Thursday.

They claimed that Mexican police and agents working for the CIA participated in Camarena’s torture and murder.

“I know and from what I have been told by a former head of the Mexican federal police, Comandante [Guillermo Gónzales] Calderoni, the CIA was involved in the movement of drugs from South America to Mexico and to the US,” said Jordan, according to a transcript of the broadcast.

“In [Camarena’s] interrogation room, I was told by Mexican authorities, that CIA operatives were in there – actually conducting the interrogation; actually taping Kiki,” Jordan claims. Berrellez explained that Camarena was kidnapped and murdered “because he came up with the idea that we needed to chase the money not the drugs.

We were seizing a huge amount of drugs. However, we were not really disrupting the cartels. So he came up with the idea that we should set up a task force and target their monies,” said the former DEA agent. Plumlee added that the CIA was also involved in helping run weapons and drugs from Caro Quintero’s ranch to Central America at the time that the Reagan administration was helping to arm the Contra rebels in Nicaragua.

After Camarena’s body had been found about a month later in a rural area, DEA agents surrounded Quintero Caro at the Guadalajara airport but, according to Berrellez, Mexican drug officers pointed their guns and told them to hand over the cartel leader. Plumlee claims that Caro Quintero was later flown to Costa Rica with the help of El Gato.”

Judge David Carter, a highly reputable Narcotics Law professor with the University of California explains why the Camarena case was so important, in his following dissertation to the government of Brazil:

“…I have traveled to Brazil to share my thoughts about the role of the judiciary in narcotics trafficking cases. It is a very complex and sometimes dangerous area for public officials. Sometimes I give too much background on narcotics trafficking and I apologize in advance; but as we discuss the role of judges, it will be needed for you to understand our success, but more importantly – our failures. I believe you will be wiser than we were, and hopefully, avoid some of our glaring mistakes.

The issues our judges face today in the arena of international narcotics trafficking may be your issues of the future. I believe judges wield tremendous personal and political power. We may be powerful but those strengths can be turned against us.

Drug Enforcement Agency agent, Enrique Camarena, was forcibly abducted across the street from the United States Consulate in Guadalajara, Mexico on February 7, 1985. The United States and Colombia had entered into an agreement to extradite cartel members to the United States for trial and incarceration for conspiracy to transport narcotics into the United States. This was an attempt to incarcerate cartel members outside their area of influence and curtail international narcotics trafficking.

Whether it was America, Mexico, Panama, Venezuela, Peru, Colombia etc. The western hemisphere governments and the worldwide community of nations recognized the destabilizing effect of the cartel. When the initial 165 Colombian cartel members were to be extradited, the Cartel announced to the Colombian News agencies that for every cartel member extradited there would be seven Colombian judges or public officials killed. This transcript that I will read portions of IS the transcript of the tape that was played to then Vice President Bush and the National Security Council of the Torture, Interrogation, and Murder of Enrique Camarena and a Mexican pilot working with Camarena, Alfredo Zavala-Avelar at a cartel location in Guadalajara, Mexico. You will hear Enrique Camarena, the agent, who is being tortured. The interrogation was taped to send a message to the United States and the Colombian and Mexican governments to cease the indictment and extradition of cartel members. Electric cattle prods were used and he was beaten to unconsciousness, revived and beaten again. The tape was turned off during the torture and turned back on for the interrogation. Camarena will be heard complaining about these injuries. Only a few minutes will be read today if time allows.

This case will set the tone for many of my remarks about the complex world of international narcotics trafficking and the application of international laws, treaties and government policies that attempt to control this global threat.

Read Camarena Transcript

Most nations of the world view narcotic trafficking as a threat to their sovereignty. I am not here to restate the evils of narcotics, but I do share these common concerns of the world community. An organized and powerful narcotics cartel necessities their own military which they must maintain to stop rival drug cartels from stealing their markets and their narcotics. But this same force can be turned on legitimate democratic governments, destabilize large governments and overthrow small governments. A powerful narcotics cartel allows criminals to subvert the democratic process by giving them a larger influence in government through their use of either force or monies.

A powerful narcotics cartel displaces economies and legitimate industries and businesses. Illegal monies obtained from narcotics and funneled into industry and business allow them to operate at lower profit margins or at a loss. This forces legitimate businesses and industries into bankruptcy and out of business. Narcotics tempts law-abiding and moral citizens to enter the world of narcotics trafficking for profit. This easy money is most tempting to the young people of our countries who dream of wealth.

Our nation has experienced this process. Our poor have become the true victims because much needed monies for food, clothing and shelter have been spent instead of narcotics – usually to the detriment of their families, including young children. Our government has then had to increase our welfare services to provide homes for the homeless and to prevent starvation and this had resulted in an increased tax burden on the middle classes….

What is the Cartel?

I will only define and deal with core drug trafficking organizations. By definition: Core drug trafficking organizations dominate multiple phases of drug trafficking from production to distribution. They operate internationally and frequently direct subordinate organizations. The United States FBI, DEA, and CIA recognize twelve Colombian, one Peruvian, one Ecuadorian, and one Venezuelan core organization. My overview will cover of these fifteen core drug trafficking organizations.

The Medellin Cartel is comprised of Colombian drug trafficking organizations headquartered in and around Medellin, Colombia and was once considered to be the largest organized criminal enterprise in the world. However, beginning in 1989, with the assassination of presidential candidate Carlos Galan, the Medellin Cartel’s position as the most dominant organization in drug trafficking began to change. Medellin Cartel figure, Jose Rodriguez Gacha, was killed by Colombian authorities. Government pressure resulted in the surrender of key figures , most significantly, Pablo Escobar, who once again became a fugitive and was recently killed by Colombian government forces…

Pablo Escobar

Despite the situation described above, the Medellin Cartel is far from defunct. Drug trafficking to the United States continues and the drug cartels are expanding their markets in Europe. Europe provides an opportunity for a larger profit margin with the average price per kilo of cocaine going for two to three times the price in the United States.

The Cali Cartel is a complex framework of compartmentalized sub-groups or ‘cells’. Cells range from fewer than 10 to more than 30 members. However, accurate cell membership is difficult to determine due to the cartel’s practice of transferring members between cells and back and forth from Colombia to the US. Cali Cartel exhibits characteristics similar to major corporations; using detailed business ledgers to track cocaine profits, assigning specific duties to members, and even insuring drug shipments against possible loss…

The Cartel frequently transports cocaine destined for the US through Mexico and Guatemala. Aircraft often stop in Colombia, Panama, El Salvador and/or Nicaragua for refueling. Cocaine is stored in Guatemala and Mexico to be transported into the United States, most often through Texas, Southern California and Southern Florida. Los Angeles and Miami are used as collection and storage locations for further distribution.

Demonstrated violence is needed to produce fear and curtail governments and private citizens from aggressively enforcing the law against narcotics trafficking.

The Urdinola Grajales Organization is a core organization located in the Northern Valle de Cauca. The organization is led by brothers Ivan and Julio Fabio Urdinola Grajales. The Urdinola Brothers head the Northern Valley Cartel…utilizing legitimate business interests in the areas of fruits, flowers, horticulture and numerous farms to facilitate the production and in-country transportation of cocaine and heroin. The Urdinolas also utilized numerous legitimate export and shipping connections that facilitate the transportation of the drugs to the US and Europe.

Some cartels now specialize in transporting [cocaine]. Their profits are either a portion of the narcotics that they receive for their services for resale or agreed upon monies when the load has been sold. The North Coast Cartel consists of numerous independent drug trafficking organizations, the majority based in the cities of Barranquila, Cartagena, Riohacha, Santa Marta, and the Guijara Peninsula, along the north coast of Colombia. Smuggling has long been a part of the North Coast culture, beginning with emeralds and eventually marijuana & cocaine when it became more profitable. These organizations now specialize in transporting cocaine for the two larger cartels located in Cali and Medellin.

As the market for cocaine in Europe has grown, the ability of North Coast traffickers to shift cocaine shipments from the United States to that expanding market has grown proportionally. North Coast traffickers have established ties to the Sicilian Mafia and are now shipping cocaine to Italy. The cocaine is shipped from Colombia, through the Strait of Gibraltar and finally to Sicily.

I mentioned that trafficking organizations and drug cartels must have an organized and well-armed military to stop rivals from taking their narcotics. This small army is often used to hold ground areas and nowhere is this more important than in coca growing areas. This armed force is also needed to guard the raw material through the narcotics network to the distributor. Growers must grow and harvest coca and that requires dominance over the growing areas….

The primary importer to Brazil is the Jairo Echeverria Organization which is a core transportation and distribution organization based in Caracas, Venezuela. This organization is responsible for transporting and distributing cocaine for the Cali Cartel between Venezuela, the US, Europe and Brazil. The organization uses cargo containers, couriers, private aircraft and commercial aircraft, shipments range between 50 and 500kg. Several associates of the Jairo Echeverria were arrested by Italian law enforcement for delivering cocaine to the Sicilian Mafia, This organization utilizes numerous banks in the Hialeah-Miami area to facilitate their money laundering.

My impression is that narcotics trafficking cases puts tremendous amount of pressure on judges. In Colombia, numerous judges have been killed. In my country [US], drug related cases constitute easily one half of the criminal case load in our federal and state courts. On a fact-finding level, it has caused our courts to deal with complex banking and money laundering issues. In most criminal prosecutions, we are listening to evidence about whether there has been direct evidence such as an eyewitness identification of the defendant. Often we listen to evidence that may be circumstantial in nature, that is, where there is not direct evidence but evidence from which an inference may be drawn that the defendant committed a crime…

Narcotics trafficking cases are much more complex. Our judges and juries must listen to and understand the complex facts involved in money laundering. Offshore bank accounts may be in the name of non-existent corporations or actual corporations. Banking ledgers may be needed from numbered and confidential accounts to show both deposits and withdrawals. These transactions involve [trillions] of dollars and may be moved on a daily basis from one bank to another. This requires the cooperation of both the United States and the country where suspected illegal drug monies are deposited. Indictments are obtained in Florida on a cartel member who is arrested in the United States or in a country that allows extradition through treaties.

List of Consortium Members identified in Panama Papers

The prosecution then must obtain the evidence necessary to convict that cartel member. The charges may be conspiracy to launder illegal narcotics monies through either real or fictitious businesses. This requires the courts to obtain the funds, or at least the banking records of the businesses through the subpoena process, and that is solely dependent upon the cooperation of the other country where the funds are located. The banking industry worldwide promises confidentiality to its customers. Whether these banks are in the Cayman Islands, Panama, Switzerland, Venezuela, or the United States, the universal problem is obtaining these banking records.

If the bank is an American bank within the United States, then usually it is quite easy for our courts to get compliance with our orders for banking records. When the bank is outside our territorial boundaries, then we are totally dependent on cooperation between the two countries. An example is Panama, under President Noriega it was virtually impossible to obtain banking records, but since his seizure the country under new leadership is more willing to exchange information….

Domestically, “RICO Laws’ were passed to stop the laundering of money through domestic American businesses. Narcotics traffickers pass narcotics monies through businesses and utilize these case flows as business profits. The narcotics traffickers even pay taxes on these monies disguised as business profits. The trafficker is then free to spend money openly in our society. Often suspicions on the part of law enforcement and the IRS are aroused with purchases of luxery items such as boats, planes, cars and other items with no identifiable source of income. The IRS has prosecuted narcotics traffickers for non-declaration of income…and for tax evasion.

The most controversial issue often involves how a nation obtains international drug traffickers to stand trial. A person may be shipping massive amounts of cocaine into Brazil and your government may decide to prosecute. Although the person is not within your territorial jurisdiction, this Cartel trafficker may be causing many criminal acts ranging from murder, attempted bribery of officials, and the importation of massive amounts of cocaine.

The first is that the foreign Cartel dealer visits your country and is seized….

The second is when a criminal proceeding begins in Brazil and names the foreign Cartel agent as a co-conspirator…allowing for extradition.

The third way the person is obtained is by conflict between nations that give rise to the use of military force. The conflict in Panama involved US military forces and President Noriega was seized. In Grenada, where US citizens were threatened, the US military occupied Grenada and was also able to shut off some the narcotic trafficking routes and airfields….

Invasion of Panama 1989

The fourth method is abduction. The case of United States vs. Humberto Alvarez-Machain raised problems for our judiciary and world governments. The DEA believed that Dr. Alvarez-Machain participated in the murder of Enrique Camarena by prolonging his life so that others [including members of CIA, DEA, and Mexican government] could further torture and interrogate him. On April 2, 1990 Dr. Alvarez-Machain was forcibly kidnapped from his medical office in Guadalajara, Mexico and flown by private plane to El Paso, Texas where he was arrested by drug enforcement agents. The US district court concluded that DEA agents were responsible for Dr. Alvarez-Machain’s abduction, although they were not personally involved in it.

Mexico responded quickly and unequivocally. On April 18, 1990 Mexico requested an official report on the role of the United States in the abduction, and on May 16, 1990 and July 19, 1990, it sent diplomatic notes of protest from the Embassy of Mexico to the US State Department. Mexico said that it believed the abduction was ‘carried out with the knowledge of persons working for the US government, in violation of the procedure established in the extradition treaty in force between the two countries’. The July 19th note requested the provisional arrest and extradition of the law enforcement agents involved in the abduction. Mexico had already tried a number of members involved in the conspiracy that resulted in the murder of Enrique Camarena in 1984. Rafael Caro-Quintero, a co-conspirator, had already been imprisoned in Mexico on a 40 year sentence but other co-conspirators, Rene Verdugo-Urquidez and Raul Lopez-Alvarez had been prosecuted in the United States and received much harsher sentences of 240 years plus life in federal prison.

The case presented fundamental questions to our court system and its relation with the Executive Branch of our government. It also raised issues of treaties and jurisdiction that is unique to narcotics trafficking cases even when they do not involve murder. Against the backdrop of the varying decisions and conflicts amongst our own judiciary is the Executive Branch’s view of abduction. Certainly, the Executive’s view changed in the 1980’s. The President and National Security Councils’ reaction to the Cartel is indicative of a nation threatened by the Cartel and feeling at war. President Reagan and President Bush both consciously chose to refer to narcotics trafficking as the War on Drugs. In 1980, under President Carter, the office of legal counsel advised the administration that such seizures or abductions were contrary to international law because they compromised the territorial integrity of the other nation and were only to be undertaken with the consent of that nation. (4B OP. OFF. Legal Counsel 549, 556 (1980).

In 1989 there was a dramatic shift in the Executive Branch of our government. In the hearing before the Sub-committee on Civil and Constitutional Rights of the House Committee on the Judiciary, the Assistant Attorney General William Barr, Office of Legal Counsel of the DOJ, concluded that the President did have the authority to override customary international law. This became known as The Barr Letter and reflected executive opinion. It was a dramatic shift in policy and escalation of the war on drugs, in part, a reaction to Enrique Camarena’s death. The result was the abduction of Dr. Machain by the DEA believing that their authority was properly exercised through the Executive.

The United States District Court held it lacked jurisdiction to try Dr. Machain because his abduction violated the extradition treaty with Mexico. The Court of Appeals affirmed the dismissal of the indictment and repatriation of Dr. Machain, stating that the forcible abduction of a Mexico national with the authorization and participation of the United States violated the extradition treaty. The Court of Appeals said ‘although the treaty does not explicitly prohibit such abductions, the purpose of the treaty was violated by forced abduction”. It upheld the District Court’s findings….The Supreme Court in a 5-4 split decision overturned the lower court’s decision. The Supreme Court noted it had never addressed the precise issue raised in US vs. Alvarez-Machain.

Our courts had dealt with abductions by private citizens without government authorization or participation and had ruled on abductions from countries without extradition treaties…these rulings were favorable, but now government sanctioned abduction was the difficult issue in a highly charged media case with public outcry for the apprehension of the murder suspects. Television and movies were made of this murder. The court agreed that Dr. Machain’s abduction was shocking and it may be in violation of general international law principles, but whether the doctor should be returned to Mexico, as a matter outside of the treaty is a matter of the Executive Branch. The Supreme Court pointedly stated the ‘advantage of the diplomatic approach to the resolution of the difficulties between two sovereign nations, as opposed to unilateral actions by the courts of one nation is obvious’. The Supreme Court had basically kept Dr. Machain and said to the President “You ordered it, now you deal with it and decide if the diplomatic difficulties with Mexico are worth this abduction”.

The same decision brought a strong dissent, our Supreme Court was very divided. The dissent stated that this case raises a question of first impressions. The case is unique for several reasons. It does not involve an ordinary abduction by a private citizen or bounty hunter as in Ker vs. Illinois (119 US. 436 (1886)), not does it involve the apprehension of an American fugitive who committed a crime in one state and sought asylum in another…Rather it involves this country’s abduction of another country’s citizen; it also involves a violation of the territorial integrity of that country with which this country has signed an extradition treaty.

The dissent noted that it was ironic that the United States had attempted to justify its unilateral action based on the kidnapping, torture and murder of a federal agent by authorizing the kidnapping of a doctor. Extradition treaties promote harmonious relations by providing for the orderly surrender of a person by one state to another, and without such treaties, resort to force often follows…

Doctor Machain was remanded to the trial court where his case was eventually dismissed for lack of evidence. The lessons for me are numerous. Our state judges often do not recognize the rulings of another state judge and this same conflict can arise between federal judges and state courts…a judge’s power is confined by geography or jurisdiction. The [Cartel] is not! Each time the Cartel crosses a state boundary or national border it calls upon us to cooperate or we will fail in apprehending the traffickers. I believe the Cartel relies on the sovereignty we cherish as a buffer to successful prosecution. Each border represents added burdens to us and a need for increased understanding by states within a country and with other nations.

The United States has attempted many programs and policies to curtail the Cartel. The first is obviously the prosecution of narcotics transporters and sellers in our state and federal courts….the second program was legislatively enacted and is called the ‘Forfeiture Program’. The numerous laws in this area have essentially one goal: to confiscate monies and properties obtained from the capital that was acquired through narcotics sales. Until recently our focus was solely on incarcerating narcotics traffickers. Often money, real property, land, cars etc. were in other persons names, such as friends and family…in the 1980’s a policy of taking the profit away was initiated. Even here the due process rights of our Constitution apply. The person who possessed monies or property is entitled to be served with notice of the court hearing date. If the person cannot be found, publication in a newspaper of general circulation must be made to notify the party who might have claim to the property or money. The hearing usually consists of the investigating officer testifying as to how the property was confiscated. The judge is required to make findings of adequate service or attempts to serve notice of the court forfeiture proceeding on the person who had the items in possession…the judge at the hearing must find adequate probably cause that the money or property was obtained through illicit narcotics activities. These assets are then forfeited to the state or federal government depending on which agency laid claim to the asset.

There have been interesting problems for the judiciary. We have seen a competition between our federal and state police agencies to lay claim to narcotics assets.The reason is that these assets are usually large sums that help support local or federal law enforcement activities. These inter-family squabbles have hurt cooperative efforts as the agencies compete for the assets. The forfeiture program has also tempted corruption in law enforcement agencies over assets, especially drug monies that can be quietly pocketed. The Zero Tolerance Policy of the United States was the outgrowth of the asset forfeiture program. Instead of rightfully targeting narcotics assets, it stated that if an individual had narcotics on their person then asset they had was to be confiscated. The glaring example of the misuse of this program was the seizure of a 60-foot yacht in Florida by the Coast Guard where a crew member was found to have just one marijuana cigarette.

A third and highly controversial program is known as the ‘Reverse Sting’….it became clear in the 1980’s that the Cartel had massive amounts of money to put in foreign banks and controlled legitimate businesses. But often the Cartel was prepared to buy already transported narcotics and resell the product at an increased price. These transactions were multi-million dollar, multi-kilo transactions. The police would have undercover agents pose as dealers to sell their load to the Cartel and when the millions arrived, the arrest would have taken place. The Reverse Sting posed multiple problems for the judiciary. In Miami, Florida and Orange County, California, the police had simply gone to the evidence lockers and taken 20-100 kilos of cocaine seized from other arrests and attempted to resell these narcotics to the Cartel. Only the police were accountable to themselves and if product was lost or stolen, there was no independent scrutiny of these activities. The uncontrolled program incentivized corruption and led to a number of murders.

To the judge willing to scrutinize these sales it presents a dangerous dilemma. The American public believes we are taking narcotics off the street, yet the idea of selling narcotics to the Cartel seems to go against the policy of ridding our society of drugs…the judge involved is personally subject to criticism and even removal from office if the cocaine is purchased by the Cartel and they get away before the arrest is made. The thought of judicial cooperation in removing confiscated cocaine from police storage and then losing it to the Cartel is difficult for the public to understand….the price has already been high, I have been that designated judge where one of the agents I signed ‘Reverse Stings’ for was killed in a crossfire of six Colombians who tried to rip him off for several kilos. The question for a judge is “how deeply do we want to get involved and what is the danger of losing our impartiality and fairness?”.

Why is this case, United States vs. Humberto Alvarez-Machain relevant to our cause? Because it shows that by Supreme Court decision the President of the United States has the authority “to override customary international law” in regards to narcotics and the War on Drugs. So lawyer friends help us out, does this mean that President Barack Obama has the ability to override the UN Convention on Narcotics and RESCHEDULE MEDICAL MARIJUANA UNILATERALLY? In the name of defunding ISIS and the Drug Cartels can Marijuana as both hemp and sinsemilla be taken off of Schedule I and put on another schedule so it can be produced domestically to the benefit of our nation rather than our detriment?

Even now the DEA, DOJ and the White House are in discussion about RESCHEDULING marijuana to a Schedule II, for medical use only to return the medical marijuana program back to whom it was designed for, the patients. But Schedule II may be too restrictive if we want to unleash the productive power of hemp and maintain the genetic diversity of sinsemilla, the government must take this into consideration before just recklessly throwing the keys at Big Pharma.

Nonetheless, Enrique Camarena was killed for, doing his job, busting a CIA pot farm in Mexico ran by the Guadalajara Cartel that was being used to trade drugs for arms in a Central American war against global communism that was flooding the streets of America with foreign pot & crack cocaine, while creating a Frankenstein monster of international proportions in both Mexico, Panama and Colombia. Why was Dr. Machain abducted? DEA vendetta? Or to find out who the dirty agents and moles were?

The most damning part of this case is that it shows that American Prohibition not only led to the creation of the Cartels, but it led to the ascent of the Cartels as having more money , power and resources than the US government itself. America’s soul was sold in the name of national security and all of those in power who participated are trapped in a cage of their own corruption.

Alright guys HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY! We have our backs against the wall so it’s time for a hardcore political download to get everyone set up for the COUNTER-ATTACK. This is not a drill, this is full scale political warfare and it’s time for boot camp.

“You are not allowed to use all that money you’ve raised from corporations and unions to make “direct contributions” to candidates or their political action committees. You also can’t take out TV adsor billboards in coordination with any of those candidates or their PACs.”

WHY IS THIS IMPORTANT?

The only way you will be effectively able to raise money against AUMA is by forming several Super PAC’s, each with a specific purpose to attack the Sean Parker machine. One PAC will be for television ads, one for newspapers, one for social media, one for digging dirt on Parker and his Consortium cronies, one for pamphlets and hand media, and several for making political contributions on the quiet to key political figures. This is also the easiest and fastest way to raise money in the US political system, its completely legal and its playing by the big boys rules so we can kick the big boys right where it hurts, the pocketbook. The key of the SuperPAC is to make the election too expensive to make it worthwhile for big business, while they have already spent $100 million, our goal is to make them spend over a billion. If they want our industry its going to cost a pound of flesh, we need to make it happen. Especially on social media.

Hashtag as many words as you can, this links your tweet to more tweets allowing people from around the world to see your truth in seconds.

You can call people out just by finding their name

Typing @donduncanasa is a #RICO #MMJ #Thief #AUMA #BADforBusiness @barackobama indict this #asshole will go WORLDWIDE and the President WILL see it because he is on twitter all the time. Welcome to the 21st Century.

Don’t overplay your hand on twitter. Don’t try to respond to people directly, use the format above to make creative messages, they play to the audience better and get you seen more effectively.

Don’t make yourself look crazy on twitter, EVERYONE can see you on Twitter, it is 100% exposure so choose your words very very carefully. Do not make threats, just say facts.

There must be a team on Twitter 24/7. Twitter has brought down countries and politicians, you can outnumber their money with this tool.

Do the same with INSTRAGRAM. It is also hashtag and referenced based but is primarily used for IMAGES and PICTURES. There are tons of people on IG every minute of the day, use this to educate and post messages. CREATE SEVERAL INSTAGRAM ACCOUNTS.

STEP 3

HOW TO USE YOUTUBE FOR PROPOGANDA

Start a YouTube Channel, the more the better.

Videotape yourself in a creative way to gain the audience’s attention, show them some herb, do something hippie cool, use digital media equipment, MAKE IT INTRIGUING TO A GENERAL AUDIENCE.

Tell the truth, and get guest stars who will.

The more you reveal about the good side and the bad side of marijuana the more the public will trust your judgement. The PROOF IS IN THE PUDDING AND SHOWING IS ALWAYS BETTER THAN TELLING.

Do Not Portray Yourself in A Hostile or Threatening Manner, DO NOT MAKE THREATS. YOU ARE NOT CLIVEN BUNDY. You are a marijuana grower trying to get the truth out, make it about THE TRUTH.

The more the better, social media is very lightweight with the Soros Gang because to them the truth hurts, they do not want the public informed. IT IS YOUR JOB TO INFORM THE PUBLIC.

MILLIONS OF PEOPLE ARE ON YOUTUBE HOURLY, PLAY A STRAIGHT GAME AND MAKE YOUR VIDEO FOR ALL AUDIENCES. DO NOT RANT BE CLEAR AND CONCISE.

STEP 4.

Congressman Adam Schiff (D) Cool guy

HOW TO CALL YOUR CONGRESSMAN

Google your congressman.

Find out where your congressman is having his next public meeting.

Go there in a big group.

Talk to him politely and respectfully, but make your concerns known.

Get his number.

Follow-up next week and thereafter into the election.

If he is pro-marijuana and anti-auma, help him out.

If he is anti-marijuana or anti-auma, then fuck him over via TruthOut to his/her constituents. DO NOT THREATEN OR DO ANYTHING ILLEGAL, just play politics.

STEP 5

MAKE ALLIANCES

Remember “The Enemy of My Enemy Is My Friend”, here are Sean Parker and George Soro’s enemies, hit them up.

Educate the enemies of our enemies about what they do in the shadows. Hurt their pocketbook.

STEP 6 – CONNECT THE MONEY

Figure out which SuperPAC’s are contributing to AUMA.

Identify which individuals and corporations are contributing to that PAC.

Connect their money to the big money ie. Hedge funds and billionaires.

Publish this information and start digging on their dirty secrets, especially if its marijuana related.

Connect the dots for the public, make them understand that this is not in their best interest.

EXAMPLE: Sean Parker is investing in a marijuana breathalyzer? MAKE THIS KNOWN.

Identify the foreign cartel money connections, this is just like Iran-Contra. We have to connect the ISIS weapons to the drug money and laundering to the drug sales we know the big boys are doing. If we all put our heads together I am sure we can figure this out.

STEP 7

RECRUIT RECRUIT RECRUIT

There are a lot of pot friendly young people out there looking for a job. Give them a damn job and earn their loyalty, teach them how to fight and get the ball rolling. The more operators we have the better. People power works in large numbers but there must be several branches that go operational. Use this chart to organize your effort.

STEP 8

GATHER EVIDENCE AND USE IT TO FUNDRAISE

Once the truth is out there will be several entities that want to donate to the SuperPAC’s, but that can only happen if you open your mouth and talk about what is going on in a clear and concise manner and show evidence. It’s time to get grimy and that may equate to providing information on pro-AUMA operators to federal law enforcement ie. FBI, DOJ, not the DEA or locals, they are corrupt. They made their bed and now they get to lie in it. Karma is a bitch and sometimes there needs to be a little no mercy Justice For All going on to stop evil people from taking things that aren’t theirs.

Leave no stone unturned, all is fair in love, war & politics, all information is fair game; let the world know how medical marijuana really works. Welcome to Operation Green Rush.

EDITOR: We would like to thank our readers for bearing with us while the site is being transitioned. Our archives are available at the bottom of the web page with all articles available by date

Dan Rush w/ Richard Lee pushing Prop 19

It should come as no surprise that the largest investors in Medical Marijuana are large international drug cartels, foreign intelligence agencies, state sponsored terrorists and the American billionaire class (primarily Republicans and Liberal Internationalists) who have used their almost unlimited pool of wealth to corrupt the medical marijuana industry in hopes of having complete market control & comparative advantage with the advent of marijuana legalization.

As the Green Pulpit has always claimed, ‘Legalization’ is a political term used to mask the legitimization of organized crime controlled grows, production facilities and collectives to create a legitimate avenue for the multi-billion dollar money laundering schemes that have kept the industry and its supply chain flowing for decades. ‘Legalization’ also maintains the role of law enforcement and continues the Drug War, by creating new legal schemes for possession and intoxication that allow law enforcement and the courts to continue indirectly taxing and jailing both marijuana businesses operators and marijuana patients. The Drug War itself is a for profit, unconstitutional, law enforcement entrapment that brings drugs into the United States, sells it to its citizens and arrests them to fill the for-profit jail system that benefits the bottom line of the 1%.

US Incarceration Rate

Foreign Activity

In rural and impoverished areas in both California and Arizona, many grows are used to support meth labs and vice versa; often with cheap or free labor being brought in by cartel coyotes, trafficking in people from Mexico, Central and South America, but also Southeast Asia and China as well. The Chinese government and Chinese businesses have been laundering money through both Mexico and California via pharmaceutical transactions, Mexican cartel banking, and most interestingly enough through Native American tribes seeking more expansive grows. Since the federal government has allowed for cultivation on Indian Reservations, many tribes have been approached by agents of the Chinese government, looking to invest hard currency into large-scale greenhouse grows on Reservation land. Their goal is to avoid having the illegal RMB’s and counterfeit USD’s from being collected by the US tax system so that they can not only have capital to create more store fronts for their operations but also so that China can protect the RMB from Federal Reserve policy.

What the hell does international currency manipulation have to do with marijuana? Quite a bit. China is using US Nixonian policy in reverse. Checking out our Secret History of the Drug War section we recall that narcotics have often been used as a weapon of war, primarily impacting the public health of the target population but also by introducing currency imbalances through the actual underground sales of the drugs themselves. China was defeated during the Opium Wars by both an influx of opium and currency manipulation by the British; China has now retooled their soft foreign policy to target America through an influx of illicit drugs, counterfeit dollars and manipulation of untaxed reserves created by the drug transactions. Did you know that China now manufactures 95% of all of the world’s ecstasy pills? Did you know that Chinese government subsidiaries are the #1 supplier of pseudoephedrine and ephedra (the base compounds of methamphetamine) to the Sinaloa and Gulf Cartels? Did you know that China White Heroin comes from Burma through traffickers and sources loyal to Chinese intelligence? It’s a cold war people and also a dirty one.

The worst part of all of this is that the international business Consortium and Republican lawmakers are actively collaborating with Chinese agents and business entities to keep medical marijuana illegal. Now why would they do that? Because the US prison system has Chinese and Russian investors, it’s really that simple. And if our best and brightest are being imprisoned and denied work over a plant, even more success for our global rivals in assuming military dominance and thus global dominance in the long term. Marijuana also has been proven to help get users off of the narcotics that the Chinese government now controls, its antithetical toward their goals. China is also heavily focused on unity through thought control, which is why marijuana is punishable by death in mainland China. They do not want any substance that encourages independent thought or subversive thought to be available to anyone, a very similar view shared by the Reagan and Bush administrations of yesteryear.

Both China and Russia have analyzed the US’s method of controlling the global narcostate and have seen its benefits in both population management domestically and in soft power with foreign affairs. Russian intelligence and the Russian Mafia have made a big impact in the LA Basin over the last few years, buying up infamous collectives, bribing the LA County Sheriff Lee Baca, to look the other way and taking over a network of grows stretching from Orange County to Downtown LA to Hollywood and the San Fernando Valley.

Want to have a better relationship with the government? Want to clean up this industry? Be patriotic and anonymously report foreign activity to Homeland Security. Show them who the good guys are!

Terrorism

San Bernardino

The most glaring issue with the involvement of foreign actors, the Russian and Mexican Mob, is their willingness to work with Saudi and Iranian investors to traffic terrorists into the United States. This author is aware of several groups of illegal Afghan and Chechen nationals trimming for the Russian Mob at various locations, including dispensaries in the San Fernando Valley, while also working part time as valets to case terror targets within Los Angeles and the surrounding Southland. There are also several Armenian and Iranian subgroups, posing as Eastern European Jews and Israelis, that have also collaborated with the Russian’s and Saudi’s to bring terror cells into the country through the marijuana business. Dispensaries, since they are cash only businesses without employment records, provide an ideal cover for imported terror, especially if the dispensary and associated grows are ran by organized crime.

This article was recently released by JudicialWatch.org, discussing the growing cases of terror smuggling in the United States:

“ Mexican drug traffickers help Islamic terrorists stationed in Mexico cross into the United States to explore targets for future attacks, according to information forwarded to Judicial Watch by a high-ranking Homeland Security official in a border state. Among the jihadists that travel back and forth through the porous southern border is a Kuwaiti named Shaykh Mahmood Omar Khabir, an ISIS operative who lives in the Mexican state of Chihuahua not far from El Paso, Texas. Khabir trained hundreds of Al Qaeda fighters in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Yemen and has lived in Mexico for more than a year, according to information provided by JW’s government source.

Now Khabir trains thousands of men—mostly Syrians and Yemenis—to fight in an ISIS base situated in the Mexico-U.S. border region near Ciudad Juárez, the intelligence gathered by JW’s source reveals. Staking out U.S. targets is not difficult and Khabir actually brags in an Italian newspaper article published last week that the border region is so open that he “could get in with a handful of men, and kill thousands of people in Texas or in Arizona in the space of a few hours.” Foreign Affairs Secretary Claudia Ruiz, Mexico’s top diplomat, says in the article that she doesn’t understand why the Obama administration and the U.S. media are “culpably neglecting this phenomenon,” adding that “this new wave of fundamentalism could have nasty surprises in store for the United States.”

This disturbing development appears on the Open Source Enterprise, the government database that collects and analyzes valuable material from worldwide print, broadcast and online media sources for the U.S. intelligence community. Only registered federal, state and local government employees can view information and analysis in the vast database and unauthorized access can lead to criminal charges. Updated data gathered on Khabir reveals he’s 52 years old and was ordered to leave Kuwait about a decade ago over his extremist positions. Khabir is currently on ISIS’s (also known as ISIL) payroll and operates a cell in an area of Mexico known as Anapra, according to the recently obtained information.

A year ago Judicial Watch reported on an ISIS camp in this exact area, just a few miles from El Paso. JW’s April 14, 2015 report identified Anapra as the location of the ISIS base, details that were provided to JW by sources that include a Mexican Army field grade officer and a Mexican Federal Police Inspector. Anapra is situated just west of Ciudad Juárez in the Mexican state of Chihuahua. At the time JW reported that another ISIS cell was established to the west of Ciudad Juárez, in Puerto Palomas to target the New Mexico towns of Columbus and Deming. Sources told JW that, during the course of a joint operation, Mexican Army and federal law enforcement officials discovered documents in Arabic and Urdu, as well as “plans” of Fort Bliss – the sprawling military installation that houses the US Army’s 1st Armored Division. Muslim prayer rugs were recovered with the documents during the operation.

A few months later JW reported that Mexican drug cartels are smuggling Middle Eastern terrorists into a small Texas rural town near El Paso and that they’re using remote farm roads—rather than interstates—to elude the Border Patrol and other law enforcement barriers. The foreigners are classified by the U.S. government as Special Interest Aliens (SIA) and they are transported to stash areas in Acala, a rural crossroads located around 54 miles from El Paso on a state road – Highway 20. Once in the U.S., the SIAs wait for pick-up in the area’s sand hills just across Highway 20. At the time JW’s government sources revealed that terrorists have long entered the U.S. through Mexico and in fact, an internal Texas Department of Public Safety report leaked by the media documents that several members of known Islamist terrorist organizations have been apprehended crossing the southern border in recent years.

Earlier this year, as part of an ongoing investigation into national security risks in the porous southern border, JW obtained evidence that proves the U.S. government has known for more than a decade about the partnership between terrorists and Mexican drug cartels. State Department documents made public by JW in January say that for at least ten years “Arab extremists” have entered the country through Mexico with the assistance of smuggling network “cells.” Among them was a top Al Qaeda operative wanted by the FBI. Some Mexican smuggling networks actually specialize in providing logistical support for Arab individuals attempting to enter the United States, the government documents say. The top Al Qaeda leader in Mexico was identified in the September 2004 cable from the American consulate in Ciudad Juárez as Adnan G. El Shurkrjumah. The cable was released to Judicial Watch under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).”

Most of the terrorists work for the Consortium anyway, because it’s in major part an international relationship between Republican leadership and the House of Saud. Osama Bin Laden was a top agent of Saudi Intelligence, as were several other prominent terrorists from Al-Qaeda. Even today we see ISIS and the al-Nusra army, sponsored by Saudi intelligence, slaughtering thousands of innocents in Iraq and Syria. Hell, even Obama knows the Saudi’s did 9/11, it’s all in the secret 28 pages.

Remember, there is no excuse to protect terrorists or spies in this business! Most of the pot growing farmers we know are red blooded die-hard freedom loving Americans who would never sell out their people or country, especially to a bunch of filthy terrorists looking to hurt innocent people. We agree, see something, say something. Save lives. Locking up a terrorist isn’t snitching.

Sex Trafficking

What women are forced to do for a job in marijuana

It’s no secret that every dispensary from San Diego to Oakland is staffed by former prostitutes, escorts, broke hippie girls and wannabe Hollywood starlets that are often recruited straight out of the sex trade or are subjected to interviews with dispensary owners that resemble nothing less than trying out for a porno. Girls are required to maintain stripper or ‘thin and slutty’ looks to keep their job, much like an airline attendant from the 1960’s; any deviation into professionalism is met by job termination.

The Asian Mob for one has brought in former massage parlor girls from Vietnam, Thailand, Philippines, Japan, China and other locations to staff their dispensaries and make sure the management is well taken care of. The Russian Mob has a habit of picking up retired porn starlets and fake models from the San Fernando Valley, usually targeting women that have addictions to cocaine or methamphetamine, so that they can be kept happy, loyal and controlled.

Girls trimming pot on the floor, no buckets or tables

Another danger to women comes during the harvest season, where many female ‘trimmigrants’ have gone up to the fields of the Emerald Triangle to harvest, only to find themselves being forced into sex slavery on the farm. The most notorious was the revelation of the Clearlake ‘Rape Box’, where women were kept in dog cages and dog crates, to be molested by the farmers and farmhands whenever they saw fit.

“LAKEPORT, Calif. — When authorities raided the marijuana growing operation, they found greenhouses filled with plants over 6 feet tall, neatly lined with individual irrigation systems. But the rest of the property, one federal agent recalled, looked like a horror scene. They found dilapidated trailers where farmers appeared to live, caches of weapons and a bloody towel.

“To me, it smacked of a scene from ‘Deliverance,'” said David Prince, assistant special agent in charge of Homeland Security Investigations in Northern California. “If I was a plant, that’s where I’d want to live. If I was a human, that’s not where I’d want to live.”

It was here, in a remote area east of Clear Lake in Northern California, that authorities allege a kidnapped teenage girl from Los Angeles County was sexually abused and occasionally held captive in a metal box. The box — about 4-by-2-by-2 feet — sat outside one of the trailers, with holes drilled through the lid and a blanket inside. The box “had been altered to imprison a human,” a federal criminal complaint read.

In charges unsealed in San Francisco, federal officials allege that two men had abused the [15-year old] girl and forced her to help with their marijuana production. The girl eventually called authorities from a West Sacramento hotel, where she was rescued, officials said.

Then, authorities raided the marijuana farm. “It was kind of like opening Pandora’s box,” said Lake County sheriff’s Sgt. Dennis Ostini. They found 1,200 marijuana plants, guns and other items. But the most horrifying discovery was the metal box the girl said she was kept in. She told police the men made her stay in it on two occasions for a total of three days, court records show.

Spray-painted on the outside was the first letter of the girl’s name. Inside was a decal that “depicted an animal skull surrounding the shadow image of a human skull with the logo ‘Bone Collector,'” according to the court documents.

The men put a hose through one of the holes to clean the girl and wash out the human waste inside, prosecutors alleged. Inside the box investigators found human hair and a poem the girl had written about being held inside the box. A “rack” allegedly used for bondage and sex toys were also found on the property. Authorities alleged in court papers that Balletto called the girl a “trooper” because she didn’t scream when she was in the box.

Authorities said the investigation is ongoing. U.S. Atty. Northern District spokesman Joshua Eaton said there could be more victims….”

Money Laundering

The quasi legal status of marijuana dispensaries in California and Colorado have created ample opportunities for organized crime and foreign intelligence to use dispensaries as an immaculate system to wash their illicit gains from cocaine, heroin, pills & ecstasy, people trafficking, stolen goods and other underworld activities. Since medical marijuana is a cash only system, it’s simply a matter of adding the illicit cash to the stockpile of legitimate yet unaccounted dispensary monies and claim a higher amount of marijuana sales to mask the transactions. There is not a BSA analysis or IRS audit or any other program outside of FINRA/FinCen licensure that can account for this, and even then it’s a legal quagmire, this is a major roadblock in federal decriminalization and true legalization.

How it works

What marijuana industry members must understand is that the US Department of Justice does not have an incentive to legitimize organized crime and foreign controlled businesses and marijuana activists must realize it is their obligation to work with the government to help discern and discriminate between individuals and organizations accurately. Who are the good guys? And who are the bad guys? Legitimate growers need to answer these questions so that the government can make an accurate prescription in performing accurate regulation and targeted enforcement against the racketeers.

Environmental Impact

500,000 gallons of stolen river water

The government is preparing to act on ‘Legal Marijuana’ in a big way because the legitimization of marijuana businesses means a gross expansions of both tax and due diligence revenue. What does that mean? Well at the Cannabis Cup, we met with a consultant from a company called Emerald Environments who were offering environmental solutions to what they regarded as the ‘coming regulatory apocalypse’ in California. They were representing a larger Fortune 500 entity that had become interested in the passage of the Medical Marijuana Regulation and Safety Act of 2015. The company had been analyzing the marijuana compliance issues, and their representative informed us that most of the marijuana industry was in gross violation of both federal and state EPA statutes within the State of California.

C’MON GUYS! We are better than this!

The consultant told us to check out the California State Water Resources Control Board’s website.

He informed us that this program will become statewide, with similar programs for indoor grows that have to meet the government’s industrial standards for air quality, soil impacts, water use and land use. Interestingly enough the SWRCB has been evaluating the industry over a period of four years and this PowerPoint pretty much details their conclusions:

Not good people. These agencies look like they are getting ready to ticket the crap out of the growing community for all of this reckless behavior with the environment. Our friend also informed us that if the tickets mount or if the environmental impact is bad enough, the consequences could lead to asset forfeiture actions similar to the DEA.

Rackets

The Green Rush is the new Gold Rush it seems, in every way and shape. Dispensaries are very much historically akin to the old Western Trading Posts that dominated California during the Gold Rush, like the historical Sutter’s Fort. Many of the people that got rich off of the gold rush were those that sold supplies (hydro-stores) to the miners and those that bought gold (dispensaries) in exchange for cash, supplies and food. The trading posts made the gold available to interested parties like jewelers and banks (vendors) who would try to take the gold back to the East Coast, either by ship or by horse and cart.

“The benefit to the forty-niners [growers] was that the gold was simply “free for the taking” at first. In the goldfields at the beginning, there was no private property, no licensing fees, and no taxes. The miners informally adapted Mexican mining law that had existed in California. For example, the rules attempted to balance the rights of early arrivers at a site with later arrivers; a “claim” could be “staked” by a prospector, but that claim was valid only as long as it was being actively worked.”

“Miners [growers] worked at a claim [grow] only long enough to determine its potential. If a claim [grow spot] was deemed as low-value—as most were—miners would abandon the site in search for a better one. In the case where a claim was abandoned or not worked upon, other miners would “claim-jump” [jack] the land. “Claim-jumping” [jacking] meant that a miner began work on a previously claimed site [steal plants]. Disputes were often handled personally and violently, and were sometimes addressed by groups of prospectors [activists] acting as arbitrators. This often led to heightened ethnic tensions. In some areas the influx of many prospectors could lead to a reduction of the existing claim size by simple pressure.”

Sound familiar?

These days what we are seeing in the industry is coercion and collusion by organized crime and city councils to lock down the authorized distributors of cannabis in order to control and fix the price of marijuana. This started in the City of Long Beach, spread throughout California and now it’s like a disease going from marijuana state-to-state. This model seems most successful in Arizona where growers are terrorized by the Paradise Valley elite, and their attack dog Sheriff Joe, who retain almost exclusive control over all available dispensaries and large scale grows in the state of Arizona. The state, despite being the neighbor of the Mother Plant, has not shared the same benefits as Oregon; in fact just the opposite. Arizona has a disproportionately high price for marijuana due to the difficulty and severe penalties for cultivation and transporting without a license in the state; the Arizona-California border is heavily maintained and most vendors have to stay super low key in the Phoenix-Tempe area due to Sheriff Joe’s Orwellian surveillance state. This pressure by law enforcement is to ensure that prices remain high for the patient or end user within the state. Local AZ growers are screwed out of the benefit of high prices because dispensaries, due to their complete control over distribution, dictate the prices they are willing to pay. Which happens to be at almost 50% below California market rate. While these groups rob the growers of their hard worked gains, they then turn around and screw the patients with 50-65$ eighths of mid-grade. We are talking a cost of $900-$1200 and a gross profit of $6000 or more, per pound. This is the wet dream of the Tax & Jail cabal known as The Consortium. They have complete domination over the Arizona market, led by local hedge fund sociopath JP Holyoak and with the aid of Marijuana Policy Project, have tried to deprive citizens of their individual grow rights in the state of Arizona so that they can continue to fix the marijuana markets as they always have. (See Part 1: Miami Boys). Holyoak and friends have even actively tried to suppress the opposing AZFMR initiative, which allows for individual grows, by bugging and hacking activists phones, monitoring Facebook chats and breaking into emails.

Sheriff Joe

The goal of this financial Consortium in every state, is to control the distribution of marijuana, subjugate and eliminate the small and medium sized farmer, commercialize greenhouses on a mass scale, sacrifice medicinal quality in exchange for high profit ‘commercial grade’, which will simply be outrageously expensive mids and kill off the competitive craft market. All medicinal quality marijuana will be controlled by Big Pharma companies like Gilead, Teva, GW, Merck and Pfizer, all owned or shares held by The Consortium members behind AUMA. The ultimate goal is to return the legal marijuana market back to the same limited number of hands that controlled it from the mid-70’s to the mid-90’s, when the cycle was broken with Dennis Peron’s liberation of the movement with Prop 215.

AUMA Sponsors (The Consortium)

They do this by bribing city councils and local police in every county of every marijuana state. These guys are billionaires so their pockets go long and deep. Most American cities still have deep budget gaps or debt dismay from the 2008 financial crisis, so their politicians are chomping at the bit for more revenue, especially if it benefits themselves. Most city councils, like those in Santa Ana, Long Beach, Santa Cruz, San Diego and many others throughout marijuanadom will not issue an operating permit unless the Mayor and Council members are offered stakes or monthly kickbacks from the dispensaries. This is not implementing a tax to benefit the public welfare, but rather political corruption designed to profiteer off a cash only business, that’s probably money laundering, with no taxes and no regulations.

We have discussed city corruption with marijuana at length in past articles and series like Narc vs. Narc, and the Coalition of Corruption. We encourage you to check out the site further.

The Consortium & Hotel California

AUMA Sponsors (The Consortium)

What is AUMA? It’s no less than the Undead Zombie of Prop 19, back from the dead once again to test the faith of the Medical Marijuana community in its final hour of justice. Prop 19, SB1262, and all of these other initiative also-rans have been nothing but attempts by Wall Street, Law Enforcement and Big Pharma to use their government influence to capture, break and redesign the marijuana supply chain as they see fit. Putting control of the industry permanently into the hands of international mafia, hedge fund billionaires, cartel front men, crooked cops and crooked politicians who refuse to let go of their Prohibition & Payola aka Tax & Jail Model.

To understand why AUMA is bad for your health we need to dial back a little bit and talk about what California means to the international marijuana movement. Why do we put such an emphasis and focus on California Marijuana Laws, and especially those of Los Angeles and the City of Long Beach? The answer is that California is where everything started for this movement and ultimately where everything will end. Northern California is literally the heart of international marijuana cash crop production and Southern California today represents a political and socio-economic ‘pivot point’ in the great struggle for marijuana decriminalization because Los Angeles is the largest and most sophisticated High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area in the world and the Port of Long Beach is equally the largest drug trafficking port in the world. Basically the largest narcotics customer base on the plant with the largest transportation/distribution hub right next to it, two key control points for every business and underworld syndicate with an interest in narcotics. California is the mother plant in the world of medical marijuana, every other state is just a clone. Colorado, as we have mentioned before, is still completely dependent on California for seeds, trim and even bud during the harsher seasons.

LA HIDTA Zone

Despite California’s status as the founder and leader of medical marijuana, many within the California movement have failed to understand why the political situation in the Golden State hasn’t stabilized. The biggest reason being that the California Movement has been in a political and legal war against the Police Departments, the Mob and the Cities of California since our journey began in the mid-90s. The California Police Union, consisting of the California County Sheriff’s, City Police Unions, and other law enforcement officials, the DEA, and the League of California Cities consisting of Mayors and City Attorneys have done everything within and beyond their legislative powers to obstruct the patient’s right to alternative medical therapy through the use of medical marijuana. Interestingly enough the tactics used by cities and law enforcement, have driven the medical marijuana industry into the hands of organized crime. Medical marijuana was a business for the patients to get access to well grown, clean and environmentally safe medical marijuana, this has since been corrupted as cartel and organized crime members have taken the marijuana cultivation process and have transformed it into a mass production supply chain.

Feinstein

California’s liberal reputation is often impeded by the wealthy and powerful conservative elements within the state. Law enforcement is heavily embedded in this conservative cabal due to history. As we have mentioned before, a sort of racial law enforcement clique began to form within the California police departments in the early 1920’s. Recruits from the Deep South and the local California KKK in Anaheim and San Diego were preferred for Law Enforcement hires for many years, due to their views on race, narcotics and institutional corruption; this practice persisted well into early 90’s culminating in a public outcry with the Los Angeles Riots of 1992 over the racial brutalization of Rodney King by the LAPD. This clique merged with the DEA under the guidance of Governor George Deukmejian and then Mayor Dianne Feinstein of San Francisco in the 1970’s to stamp out the power of the hippie movement in California, and has continued to remain embedded in municipal and state administrations throughout California ever since the consolidation of power by the Neo-Conservatives during the Reagan Years.

The Neo-Con’s are no different than Neo-Liberals, they are the 1%, the Trilateral Commission, the Bilderberg Group, the Illuminati, whatever you want to call them, they are the rich guys with all the money and power that hate humanity and have a Malthusian dream of self-fulfilling biblical prophecy so that they can have their Elysium planet. They control the flow of international narcotics, including marijuana after they consolidated control during the 1970’s and they sit on both sides of the aisle so that the American people stay in the dark about how American power really works. The likes of Americans For Safe Access, The Drug Policy Alliance, Students for Sensible Drug Policy and the Marijuana Policy Project were commissioned by George Soros, George Zimmer, Peter Lewis, JP Holyoak and Bush Attorney General John Ashcroft to disrupt, dismantle and hijack the medical marijuana movement and deliver it to the Anglo-American corporate interests that had paid handsomely for it. The Consortium is led by former President George H.W. Bush and other co-executives and majority shareholders of major pharmaceutical names like Beyer (GW Pharmaceuticals), Merck, Teva, Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Gilead, Altria, RJ Reynold, British American Tobacco and Eli Lilly. The Bush DEA’s number one target for some time has been the Pioneers of Medical Marijuana and the people around them that helped found Prop 215; seeking to dismantle any remnant of the movement that pushed using marijuana as a medicine.

The goal was to discredit marijuana as a medicine and push it as tobacco-like vice product, to protect their business interests from competition and consolidate power under their own mantra ‘Legalization’; the purpose of this is to divide and conquer the medical marijuana movement so that the Consortium can continue to steal the old growers trade secrets and then patent them as their own, to develop Schedule II pharmaceuticals like Sativex and Epidolex. The Consortium has enabled their AstroTurf activist front groups including Americans For Safe Access, Marijuana Policy Project and the Drug Policy Alliance to wreak havoc on the entire medical marijuana community and its patients alike. To a large extent they have succeeded, in large part, thanks to collusion by the California Police Unions and the League of California Cities.

Palaces of Prohibition

DEA

The base of Neo-Conservative power in California is San Diego County that is the source of much of their financial and institutional power for the entire world. San Diego is home to the richest and one of the largest Mormon communities in the United States; it is also the largest base of Neo-Nazi funding and power in California. It is the home of the Tea Party and residence of many outspoken Neo-Con power brokers like Darrell Issa, Duncan Hunter, John McCain, Mitt Romney, Margaret Cargill (of Cargill, Monsanto’s partner in crime) Bill Gates, and many retired officers of the Neo-Con military command.

San Diego possesses one of the largest military installations in the United States with 6 Naval Bases, 3 Marine Bases and 1 Coast Guard Station. San Diego also possess the largest DEA presence in California; it is effectively their stronghold and major front for the entire country. San Diego has been a military town for over 100 years and because of this, their culture has evolved with both the National Defense culture and the Narco-State culture created by the DEA. Many law enforcement personnel in California retire to San Diego after they have completed their service. This is why Americans for Safe Access, formerly a major Bush DEA front, operates primarily out of San Diego, Sacramento, formerly Long Beach and Bakersfield; because their illegal operations were shielded by Neo-Con friendlies in those municipalities and alternatively by Mexican Cartel and Chinese Triad counterparts in LA and San Francisco.

The next source of Prohibition power in California comes from Orange County, a major source of Republican financial strength attributing much of its rise as an S&L, Cocaine, Money Laundering and Real Estate hub in the 1980s. This county is controlled mostly by major Republican land barons like billionaire Donald Bren of the Irvine Community and William Lyon of Lyon Communities who are financially the lords and masters of most of the cities in LA County, they control the politics through business and the streets through narcotics distribution ran by Italian Mafia front men out of Newport Beach, Santa Ana and Anaheim. The Orange Curtain or ‘The OC’ is the ideal example of a neo-conservatives dream of a corporate fiefdom. Many GOP powerbrokers are born and raised through Orange County’s privileged Republican private school system, which uses a series of Catholic schools to place young adults in conservative colleges throughout the country like USC, ASU, Chapman, Amherst and other well-known conservative institutions for ideological training. Most dispensaries owned in Orange County are front’s for money laundering, cocaine and pill smuggling and controlled by members of local organized crime that use patients as a front to disguise their illicit activities.

OC is a significant battlefront, because not only is Orange County a major source of Republican wealth but it has also become a major distribution hub for the Mexican Mafia in California. Thanks in large part to municipal corruption and a plentiful amount of Carlito’s Way-type Coke Attorneys, the Mexican and Asian Cartels have taken complete control of the cities of Santa Ana, Huntington Beach, Orange, Anaheim, Westminster, Buena Park and Garden Grove. The rule in Orange County is that the wealthy live south of these cities, and that the police provide almost a DMZ-like front line at the city limits for these areas. The Neo-Con and KKK backed city administrations in the poor cities oversee the chaos of gang violence and drug distribution in collusion with the Cartel, collecting profits from both the incarcerations and narcotics sales. The author of SB1262, Lou Correa, is the State representative of the district controlled by the Cartels, and his bill is designed to hand the California medical marijuana industry over to the collection of Consortium-Cartel interests that are fronted by the Marijuana Mafia.

Lou Correa

The third source sits in Oakland and Silicon Valley, these are the Silicon Libertarian Billionaires like Sean Parker, Mark Zuckerberg, Peter Thiel and other tech Nazi’s that see marijuana as a pathway towards managing digital serfdom. These young guns owe their money and success to their Neo-Con handlers, who are all ex-Nixon and Reagan Era elite, and they are being crafted to be the next Rockefellars and Soro’s of the 21st century where the population will be managed digitally. AUMA is not the brainchild of Parker, but he is the marketable face of the scheme in an attempt to disassociate Zombie Prop 19 from its odious origins. Marijuana in the bay area is largely managed by a cooperative effort between the mafia-end of the Teamsters Union, led by the utterly corrupt, yet indicted, Dan Rush and ex-DEA hacks in Contra Costa, Alameda and Monterey and the Asian Mob primarily managed by the San Francisco Tong’s with its big shots like Raymond Chow and former State Senator Leland Yee.

The fourth major source of financial power and probably the most critical is the one sourced in Los Angeles County. The Republicans have long viewed the City of Los Angeles as an ideological warzone and have done everything within their power to hamper the cities progression, citing a need to avoid the creation of “San F**cisco Liberal Fascism”. The sources of Republican power in Los Angeles are Long Beach, Flintridge, Simi Valley, Glendale, Pasadena and the Western Valley; despite LA’s overwhelming population of Democrats, the LA GOP holds an amazingly disproportionate level of power within LA City Hall and especially the LA County Board of Supervisors & Sheriff. Out of the four areas mentioned thus far, this group is by far the cleverest and also the most dangerous; they are big time shot callers in the Republican world because they hold a key responsibility within the power structure of the Consortium. They possess the responsibility of managing and overseeing the largest narco-trafficking corridor in the entire world, the Los Angeles Basin.

Michael Antonovich

The Debacle

Mayor Bob Foster

The Port of Los Angeles and the Port of Long Beach exist side by side as the largest domestic import hub for international cocaine, methamphetamine and heroin trafficking in the United States. Every year ton upon metric ton of Afghan heroin comes in through the Port of LA and Long Beach where it is taken to reprocessing labs in South-Central and Downtown LA to be sold to local syndicates and gangs throughout the county and country. The narco-trafficking in the port is primarily facilitated by the Teamsters, Long Beach Police Department and Long Beach City Attorney’s Office who use payoffs, gangland intimidation tactics and murder to maintain a protection racket over the port unions in exchange for silence. Former Long Beach Mayor Bob Foster, and former City Attorney Bob Shannon, leading members in relation to Long Beach organized crime, initially conceived the idea of allowing medical marijuana dispensaries in Long Beach as a cover for improving cocaine and heroin distribution flows in Los Angeles through a man named John Melvin Walker, currently serving federal RICO time, when heroin imports began to surge out of Afghanistan in 2006 and 2007. They were backed by the Neo-Conservative establishment of Los Angeles led by County Supervisors Don Knabe and Michael Antonivich, the two men pulling the strings at the top of the Los Angeles Narcotics Pyramid, along with major financial support from William Lyon in Orange County. However things did not go as planned as hippies began to show up in Long Beach to apply for business licenses; they were more skilled at growing, actually took care of the patients and were able to undercut the Consortium backed collectives with their exorbitant prices. The Consortium was immediately threatened, they had controlled Long Beach for years through the power of the Bush-Walker Family, and suddenly their billion dollar narco-trafficking operations were being upended by the California hippies once again. In response, Prop 19 and the municipal bans were conceived by the Consortium to divide the marijuana movement and racketeer the marijuana industry through over regulation.

Don Knabe

Since that time, with the help of the Marijuana Astroturf organizations, the Consortium has successfully led an illegal regulatory coup d’etat with the disastrous Long Beach “Ban Regulation” and the passage of Proposition D in LA County, both measures designed to insulate and protect collectives backed by the Consortium interest. This same group has pushed Long Beach Police Chief, Jim McDonnell, a former LAPD narco-crony from the Gates Years, to become the new Los Angeles County Sheriff. McDonnell is a staunch prohibitionist, declaring his opposition to medical marijuana at a Long Beach Planning Commission meeting and stating that he believed marijuana patients exaggerated their illnesses. McDonnell has voiced this opinion to protect the interests of his former political handlers, Long Beach City Attorney’s Bob Shannon and Charlie Parkin, who in return have aided McDonnell’s run for Sheriff by helping him fabricate Long Beach crime statistics. Patient’s in Long Beach currently live in fear of McDonnell, because of his past use of a Neo Nazi affiliated policemen named ‘Officer Strohmann’, to conduct brutal intimidation against citizens investigating the narcotics rackets.

Benedict Arnold’s

Why would you trust a fucktard in a tree? This is professional!?

Let’s talk about morale and loyalty for a minute. Morale is low among California activists these days, including those among OC NORML and the California Cannabis Coalition, as many die-hard activists and political supporters have found themselves betrayed by trusted leaders in lieu of the demonic AUMA creeping upward in the polls. Growers and operators alike followed the siren call of the Emerald Grower’s Association led by inexperienced political hacks like Hezekiah Allen and Sean Donahoe, who have used their family relations to build industry clout as a pair of pied pipers that have led growers to nothing but political failure and ruin. Earlier this year, comedy grower Micky Martin infamously lampooned the pair of hucksters during the Fuck Mickey Awards 2015, largely targeted at Consortium members within the industry for their deceptive practices. Hezekiah Allen completely failed negotiations with the state regarding individual growing rights, claiming that it was the industry’s obligation to make concessions while taking payouts from regulatory insiders to dig the knife deep in the Emerald Triangle’s back. Allen disingenuously failed to mention that California regulatory, hungry for tax revenue, were prepared to make major concessions on grow rights and the Medical Marijuana Regulation and Safety Act but being the false prophet that he is, we were failed utterly if not maliciously.

Look at this bullshit website, seriously?!

NORML and the Law Offices of Matthew Pappas also have to take responsibility for some of the disarray in the movement. NORML, already controversial due to Keith Stroup’s epic betrayal in the late 70’s, has pretty much continued the Long Sell Out of the movement by feeding grower after grower to predatory lawyers and political organizations that have no shame in turning over our people to the regulators and law enforcement authorities without proper legal protection. It was NORML that initially backed Prop 19, it was NORML that helped Lou Correa draft SB1262 and it was NORML that backed EGA and told the growers that they could trust Hezekiah Allen to sell them upriver with the formation of MMRSA and now AUMA.

Also we can’t let the leadership of CCHI 2016 off the hook either for wasting everyone’s time and happily taking everyone’s money. Buddy Duzy, the leader of CCHI, is an idiot huckster and an idolater of Jack Herer, yet he seems to annually take a shit on Jack’s dream by sabotaging the collection of signatures for Jack’s initiative while taking political donations to keep buying himself an endless marijuana supply. Also if you ever met Buddy, one would understand that he has no concept of law or what a lawyer is for and should probably be the last person leading a referendum on anything. His well-liked stoner partner, Michael Jolson, is probably the most disappointing of the group, as many relied on his ethical and congenial character to keep an eye on Buddy rather than collaborate with the poorly educated junkie on wasting everyone’s important time. Thanks Buddy and Mike, you couldn’t have helped the bad guys more by distracting us with your false prophecies and financial malfeasance, karma will be a huge bitch, best believe it.

Buddy being a leader

This Coalition of Corruption between the Cartels, the Cops, The City Administrators and The Consortium are now going for the throat with AUMA. The bill and its proponents claim that the AUMA will correct the loopholes left for Law Enforcement by Prop 215. The Bill in reality is a complete and utter nightmare for the medical marijuana movement; AUMA is Prop 19’s real intent in its true corporate form. AUMA hands the industry over to the corporate oligarchy and California Law Enforcement Complex on a silver platter; the bill violates federal law and completely upends the medicinal spirit of Prop 215 in favor of a small cabal of business interests known as the Marijuana Mafia.

Now that we understand what California has been dealing with let’s talk about AUMA:

10 Reasons Why AUMA is a TRAP

It’s going to raise the price of pot worldwide.

When the price of marijuana per pound in California goes up, prices go up even higher everywhere else. A tax like AUMA’s sets a price floor aka price control in the market, meaning it’s impossible to sell marijuana below a certain price because of the tax burden without taking a loss. Colorado learned their lesson during the past two years when the price of marijuana experienced deflation from a supply glut. Since Colorado implemented price controls before the price drop, they are now stuck selling marijuana above its market price thus expanding their own street market and diminishing their legal market. Since marijuana supply will only increase as state after state legalizes, a premature tax will toxify the mother plant and global marijuana markets in a very unsettling way.

Most of the tax revenue goes to jails, police and insider bureaucracy.

This is not a lottery sin tax, this tax is designed to fill law enforcement and prison system budget gaps to keep business running as usual after marijuana arrests become invalidated.

Marijuana will still have felonies and prison sentences under the California Penal Code for all patients and recreational users.

A crime is only a crime if there is a legal punishment for it. As long as marijuana remains within the California Penal Code, possession and production will remain a crime. AUMA does not decriminalize or fully legalize possession, it legalizes sales and purchases but lets the police keep their pound of flesh by still allowing marijuana arrests.

Drugged Driving with worse DUI punishments than drunk driving.

Marijuana has been proven to not impair motor vehicle driving, but despite these studies, law enforcement has moved forward by sponsoring companies that are working on creating an accurate marijuana breathalyzer to entrap marijuana patients with highly subjective DUI charges that are being slated to have more of an impact than an alcohal DUI. Law Enforcement is basically saying, with legalization, be careful what you wish for because you just might get all of it, including police entrapment.

Personal grows can be banned by the state.

AUMA only requires a simple parliamentary majority to overturn personal growing rights and trust me, this is not an IF but a WHEN if this bill gets passed. None of the AUMA sponsors want small growers competing with them or offering up superior homemade product.

Cities and counties can ban outdoor cultivation.

Cities and counties will continue to racketeer marijuana businesses with impunity, expect all the grows and shops to be owned by the mayor and his family with this one.

Cities and counties can pass arbitrary taxes, ordinances and bans.

In addition to an outrageous price driving state tax, we will also have price hiking city taxes and ordinances, along with city wide bans that have CUP’s issued to only to those with enough money to properly bribe the city councils.

Eliminates Prop 215 constitutional protections.

Goodbye medical marijuana and its constitutional protections. Subordinates California law to the Federal Schedule I Prohibition, turning cannabis from a legal right into a legal privilege. Think DMV license suspension, exactly.

Allows for control by outside industries (Alcohal, Tobacco, Pharma, etc.)

Opens the door wide open for Consortium control. Expect Sean Parker and the Coalition of Corruption to storm in, bribe every city from Yreka to Imperial Beach, lock up every grower that doesn’t kow tow, and buy up all of their assets at the auction for rock bottom prices.

Reinstitutes control of the national industry under DC insiders and billionaires.

Reinstitutes Consortium control over the medical marijuana industry. GOP drug lords like the Bush Family, the DuPonts and Kochs will continue to use marijuana as a front for cocaine and heroin distribution, while loading up the private prison system, that they own, with the patients that they sell their products to.

Legal Marijuana is a trap and Medical Marijuana, once a community benefit, is now mired by fraud. There it’s been said, coming from someone that has grown, cultivated, harvested, trimmed and sold marijuana for medical use; one can no longer deny the state of decay that has swept the medical marijuana business. The Green Rush is the 21st century Gold Rush, and like everything that starts off as a benefit, it is ending as a burden. This writing is no less a confession about the world that we the growing community have lived in, the real world.

The Beginning

Medical Marijuana was a miraculous concept dreamed up by the genius and legendary pot dealer Dennis Peron. Dennis was known for having the first major marijuana collective and the first legal collective in San Francisco. He is most well known for being the author of Proposition 215, the first medical marijuana law for compassionate use in world history. He was associated with the gay rights movement through his friend Harvey Milk and understood that medical marijuana would be instrumental in fighting the global AIDS crisis that had begun in the 1980s. The Dallas Buyers Club is actually a movie about Mr. Peron and his friends, just different characters and different situations, but nonetheless it’s the same story; about a group of afflicted people, sentenced to death indirectly by their own government, resorting to smuggling and other shady tactics just to survive their own diseases and seize their right to life. That is how the medical marijuana movement started, as a fight for the right to live.

Dennis Peron and Jack Herer – Heroes of Marijuana

Dennis’ vision, as a true hippie, was that medical marijuana growers would work together in communes or collectives to create marijuana medicine for the terminally ill to fight the ravages of industrial disease and immunological diseases in our modern world. He believed that marijuana growers should make a profit but not allow greed to become excess and inherently corrupt his vision. Many growers and collectives stood with Mr. Peron’s vision but over time they were corrupted by the greed of fast money, illegitimate opportunity and from the machinations of criminal predators, enhanced by clandestine corruption within the government itself.

Proposition 215 was a collective effort by many famous hippies, smugglers, lawyers and other generally good willed individuals that sought to liberate the misery of many of their friends and in many cases themselves from years of physical and psychological ailments.

Proposition 215 originally had two versions, Dennis’ version and the version we have today:

“By late January, 1996, it was becoming clear that Dennis Peron’s network of volunteers could not come up with enough signatures to place the Compassionate Use Act of 1996 on the ballot. Some 433,000 valid signatures were needed by April 24; Dennis’s followers claimed to have gotten 175,000 of uncertain validity and Panzer says that number was inflated. Enter Ethan Nadelmann (Founder of Drug Police Alliance and Prop 19 advocate), a 40-yearold drug-policy expert who runs a Manhattan think tank called the Lindesmith Center, through which he allocates $4 million annually on behalf of financier George Soros. Nadelmann has a law degree from Harvard, a doctorate from Princeton, and is the author of a book about the drug war, “Cops Across Borders: The Internationalization of U.S. Criminal Law Enforcement.” He knew the effort to get a medical marijuana initiative on the California ballot had a strong chance of success because a statewide poll taken in June 1995 by David Binder Associates showed that 60% of the voters were favorably inclined.

George Soros

Soros agreed to back a professional signature drive after reading a New York Times article that said Dennis already had gathered 200,000 valid signatures. Nadelmann was concerned about Soros et al being perceived as out-of-staters exerting political influence in California (which of course they were). He also wanted proof that the reform effort had support beyond Dennis Peron’s circle of friends. He got reassurance on both counts in February when George “I Guarantee It” Zimmer, president of the Men’s Wearhouse, a resident of Oakland, pledged $105,000 towards a professional signature drive. (It was actually in the form of a loan.) Nadelmann then kicked in $350,000 from Soros; $300,000 from Peter Lewis, the owner of Progressive Insurance in Cleveland; $100,000 from John Sperling, a professor of economic history whose Phoenix-based Apollo Group owns 88 private colleges.(and who was also backing a medical marijuana initiative in his home state of Arizona), and $50,000 from Laurence Rockefeller. “All these individuals, as businessmen, consider drug prohibition wasteful and costly,” says Nadelmann, “and each has personal reasons for feeling strongly about it.”

Peter Lewis

Of Soros he says, “He has a practical concern about the drug issue: it’s in danger of bankrupting the country. We’re spending hundreds of billions of dollars a year on the war on drugs, if you count law enforcement, medical costs, and lost productivity.” In other words, the donors represent an enlightened faction of capital. There were strings attached to the money. Nadelmann wanted control of the campaign placed in the hands of a “professional,” and he selected a Santa Monica consultant named Bill Zimmerman, based, he says, on Zimmerman’s success promoting an insurance-reform measure that passed in 1993. “Dennis Peron is a remarkable character,” says Nadelmann, “and it’s true that the movement was ‘organic,’ in that he got his signatures through volunteers. But if I had one moral to draw from this situation, it’s to go straight to the professionals and avoid the hassles involved in starting with the grass roots.” Zimmerman, upon getting the money from Nadelmann, created a front group called Californians for Medical Rights (CMR) and hired a competent outfit called Progressive Campaigns to get the signatures. The signature gatherers were paid 60¢ per —high for a popular measure_ and the rate was upped to $1 per signature before they had more than enough.”

Dennis was left in a position of less authority over Prop 215 following the political takeover by Nadelmann backed by George Soros and the Consortium. The same group would later have police stings initiated against Dennis’ cannabis clubs in San Francisco to put him under financial and psychological pressure, while allowing the Consortium to negotiate a deal to modify Prop 215 with California Attorney General Dan Lundgren, the Fraternal Order of Police and the Correctional Officers Association to ensure that marijuana, despite being made medical, would remain in the California penal code and thus remain an enforceable crime in the State of California.

DA Dan Lungren

Soros won out with the real Prop 215 being shelved in the annals of history at the infamous Castro Castle while the second Prop 215, sponsored by the police and the US prison system, would be implemented into law. Prop 215 would become one of the largest public biological experiments in US history, as Soros intended for free medical research, and at the same time Prop 215 would became one of the largest reverse stings ever concocted by federal and state law enforcement in world history. This is the viciousness of those who have pushed for pot legalization in the forms of Prop 19, SB1262 and now AUMA, because it removes constitutional protections under medical law and brings everything back under the rigid and brutal interpretations of the Controlled Substances Act. However, defense attorneys won’t tell you this because legalization was designed in their favor, to give them more cases, more clients and more work, same with the law enforcement side. Marijuana will always be a crime as long as it remains in the California Penal Code, once it is removed from the CPC it can find its true home in the Public Health Code where it can no longer be cited by law enforcement.

Marijuana is a medicine. It causes the body to regenerate itself. To regenerate from Cancer, AIDS, psoriasis, auto-immune disorders and psychological trauma. Marijuana is a regenerative plant, just twist a branch until you hear a crack, then watch it grow stronger and bulkier; because that is the natural function of marijuana genetics, to reconstruct, rebuild and restore.

The Racket

Marijuana is born into this world as seed, that seed is grown into a plant that becomes a mother, and from that mother comes trimmings known as clones. Like life and people, some clones are good and bear good nug, while other clones are bad and bear nothing. The clones must then go under 18 or more hours of light every day to vegetate and grow into something with potential. Then the amount of light is reduced at the right time to encourage the now vegetative plants to flower and thus bear fruit. In the United States, in order to create 99 of these fruit bearing plants, an individual must have a sick patient with AIDS, cancer or some other kind of terminal disease, and their doctor’s referral, to sponsor and justify the 99 plant exemption and produce a full crop. To produce a profitable crop, several of these exemptions along with countless referral scripts from other patients with 6 to 12 plant allowances, must be collected, gathered and filed. A dispensary facilitates this process by requiring a copy of the referral paperwork in order to become a member of their collective.

So what the hell does that all really mean? The bottom line, it means that every new patient to a cannabis collective generates approximately two pounds of marijuana or $4000 in production value per crop and that a terminally ill patient, with AIDS or cancer generates approximately 31 pounds or $62,000 in production per crop. A good grower can turn over 5 or more productions in a year, that’s about 155 pounds or $310,000 a year; the grower can sell the 155 pounds in another state, he can be looking at upwards of $900,000 or more.

All in exchange for the right to purchase the pot, the patient effectively loans their allotment to the collective, and buys it back at 375% markup for consumption. What has this done? This has given incentive to a racket to keep patients from growing their own allowances and centralize production with the distributor, ie. The collective and their private networks, minimizing competition and keeping prices high. This has also politically encouraged distributors and operators to work with law enforcement on forming favorable regulatory regimes as we see with MMRSA and AUMA. Further, it has created financial incentives for the exploitation of sick patients and their medical records on a national level on the basis of obtaining their personal growing rights.

The Circus Show

Many stood at the US High Times Cannabis Cup 2016 on 420 week, watching the dead spirits of yesteryear desperately search for that golden bud with little avail. The event was hastily put together after High Times lost their permit in Colorado for permitting illicit narcotics sales to take place on fairgrounds during the event. Like a wounded cur, High Times retreated to their own territory at the NOS Events Center in the Tweaker Capital of California, San Bernardino. The unseemly racetrack is a company owned property where High Times could continue its for-profit charade with impunity. The scam is an easy one, charge ‘potreprenuers’ and underworld figures alike for networking access, while at the same time running a tourist scam using free dabs, free carnival rides, very expensive munchies and very expensive trinkets to fleece suburban stoners while providing a cover for large scale smuggling activities.

Tom Forcade on High Times Magazine

High Times never left the business of narcotics distribution, its founder, ex-CIA agent Thomas Forcade, was one of the largest drug smugglers on the East Coast during the 60’s and early 70’s. Forcade used the magazine as not only a tool of resistance but also for underworld communications, revealing the market rates of underground pot flows and using coded articles to send messages back and forth between smugglers. Forcade would inevitably be assassinated when Richard Nixon consolidated the global narcotics markets in the early 1970’s to pave the way for the cocaine markets of the 1980’s. The US Department of the Treasury, knowing that High Times is a rogue, money laundering CIA operation has not failed to audit High Times annually, desperately searching for their link to Panamanian Bank Accounts.

A feeling of doom and gloom had seemingly taken hold of the ‘potreprenuers’ and marijuana activists at the Cup despite the near advent of legalization. High Times Editor and corporate pocket holder, Dan Skye, pretty much said ‘Fuck The Movement’, in a not so indirect way during the awards ceremony, pretty much cheering on the death of Mr. Nice and declaring his advocacy for the short passing of other marijuana icons so that they could make way for the ascension of the new Marijuana Robber Barons. Skye could barely withhold his sellout support to the dreaded Adult Use of Marijuana Act, also known as AUMA. A bill for marijuana ‘legalization’, financially backed by the same group of Neo-Con’s (Parker, Schultz, Kissinger, Liddy, Soros, Holyoak, Thiel etc..) that heralded the Controlled Substances Act with Nixon in 1971. A bait in switch of the most epic proportions, sponsored by the worst hearts of Silicon Valley and their Republican Party/ex-DEA cohorts in Washington. This has a created a pall of depression as, much like we have seen in the 2016 election, big money politics is seemingly prevailing over common sense, with or without the American people’s permission.

*EDITOR’s Note: We are beginning a new series today called ‘The Truth’, probably our most controversial and groundbreaking series on the marijuana industry yet. We begin with an article from the 1970’s, it is strongly encouraged that readers review our section Required Reading to help put the puzzle pieces together as our new articles are released. Shalom!

Miami Kingpins Jack Up Prices by Al Kammerer (1977)

“ Disguised as big marijuana buyers from the Midwest, a team of investigative reporters recently penetrated the marijuana market [in Florida], discovering that is has been totally taken over by a few wealthy businessmen who boast combined assets totaling hundreds of millions of dollars and there is evidence that these businessmen are receiving direct government protection. Searching into the reason why pot prices have risen 70% or more in the last 2 years, the investigators found what one of them described as ‘a really classic price fixing conspiracy, a veritable OPEC of a marijuana cartel”.

The investigators report that the situation in Miami, which is the American delivery point for most Colombian marijuana, defies the claim of ‘experts’ that a clandestine, compartmentalized cannabis scene could never be cornered. In fact, the marijuana monopoly has apparently manipulated the media and market psychology so masterfully this year that speaker after speaker rose at a recent NORML confab, to deplore the “drought”…more than 2 months after the market broke with an actual glut of marijuana. High prices have been maintained, and the glut has been covered up in the months since.

Like California peach growers who burn trees to keep prices high, the Miami group reportedly warehouses mountains of [marijuana], leaving it to sour and mold until their price is met. One of the investigators, who spoke of experiencing close calls in various criminal circles, is in the process of gathering evidence implicating government and local ‘business’ community figures in a Capone-like web of intrigue and corruption involving the control of [marijuana].

The investigator said that:

“The marijuana cartel is like the diamond cartel. Since diamonds are always in demand, the cartel offers packets at dictated prices that are three times the actual cost, take it or leave it. Being rebellious over the situation only leads to being banned from trading. When interest and cash flow drop due to boredom, low quality or whatever, they cut loose enough good stones, or in this case, [good bud], to draw investors back into the market, where they can again be swamped with bunk goods. It’s a den of thieves, Miami. The middlemen use brainwashing techniques of sensory deprivation and random disturbances by locking the buyer up in motel rooms for days to break down their resistance. You begin seeing and hearing things, so when the phone rings it’s like being struck by a gong”

He goes on to explain how the ‘bunk pot’ is sent to the consumer while prices remain high as ever:

“Even with high grand merchandise, a package deal where they lay some of the bunk on you is the rule with these jerks. Once the intimidated buyer has committed his money, the monopoly vanishes again behind their mercenary middlemen. They sweat you out until you are ready to be plucked like a turkey.”

‘Commercial Grade’

He opened an attache full of cash and rummaged around until he found a tattered address book. He explained that the number he was about to call a swarthy, heavily muscled gentleman from Hallendale, which was known for its mob connection scene. Apologizing for the weed we were smoking, he volunteered to get his source on the phone if we would pretend to be one of the many stuck with commercial, inferior grade cannabis. When he reached his man, a spirited exchange ensued until he put his hand over the mouthpiece and said “Just tell him you’re stuck with the last and can’t look at anything but gold”

It was somebody heavy on the phone. In the next 5 minutes, we were offered credit, free delivery to anywhere in the U.S. – up to 200 pounds plus the removal of seeds and shake, if we would simply help them sell off their commercial pot. But when we suggested that taking bad stuff, even on a front, always meant losses and that we wanted gold, we were simply told: “The golds and reds* are in, but we have to move off the rest of this commercial stuff before they will cut it loose”. We objected that ‘marijuana was a vegetable’ and that warehousing it would cause it to lose potency. “That’s alright” said the contact “they are putting all the good weed in big freezers this year”.

*Acapulco or Colombian Gold and Panama Red”

In a classic capitalist coup, some super-rich marijuana kingpins in Miami have developed so much excess buying power that they can warehouse pot for months, opening and closing the doors at will, to dictate both price and flow. The marijuana moguls have so much buying capacity that only in the commercial grades is there enough around for a smaller buyer to invest in. they have so much capacity that they can even hold the good stuff off of the market…or allow just enough gold or red to trickle out at super premium prices that prices on commercial grade do not sag too much.

To explain the rise of a Miami-based cartel, insiders point to the fact that is become much harder in the last few years for independents to bring in boats and planes elsewhere, and those who did it cheaply, got cracked. Miami was the one place with a long tradition of government and police collusion that could enable those with money and Mafia lawyers to bargain with the authorities when necessary. The investigator referred to a case where one of his fellow teammates got busted. They located a lawyer who for $4000 made the whole thing evaporate at the police level. A scramble for influence inevitably led to the emergence of a handful of powerful men combining forces and enjoying a dominant position in the trade.

Colombian Gold

The final takeover of the Colombian market at the end of 1975 by the Miami group solidified prices at a hundred dollars higher than before, never to come down again (*until the passage of Prop 215 in 1997). It is clear that the critics of decriminalization who worry about marijuana being taken over by RJ Reynolds and Big Tobacco shouldn’t worry – pot is already under the thumb of a very large marijuana monopoly.

The investigator capped his report with the new that Don Aemillo, a [transporter] busted last Summer with 180 tons, was actually being escorted into Miami by the Coast Guard to foil jackers, all of the freighters marijuana hit the market. He then made a warning to those who might be interested in taking up a kingpin on offers to get fronted anywhere in the country: “A lot of folks who get fronted get fattened up until, at the end of the season, a couple of jackers visit them with shotguns and take it all, so the victims will be back working for the Miami Boys next year”. We hope this story reaches the New York Times and we hope the investigators stay healthy.

In 2015, corruption, abuse and violence among US law enforcement agencies became an issue of discourse at the American dinner table, as deep reservations have spread across the public in regards to their relationship with those “sworn to protect”. Many deadly police shootings occurred with the deaths of several minors, young men and women alike totaling nearly 1,000 deaths (according to the Washington Post) and 10% of those killed were unarmed and not in the process of committing a crime but merely ran from police out of the fear of being murdered. While police shootings and violence have taken a front run in the media, medical marijuana growers and patients are no strangers to such encounters with law enforcement. The medical marijuana industry has endured the edge of the spear of police corruption for several years if not decades counting the passage of medical marijuana laws in the late 90’s and 2000’s. Despite a voter mandate and the implementation of a regulatory structure, again and again, marijuana patients and growers have found themselves subjected to the deadliest side of law enforcement abuse, with such tactics as murder, racketeering, theft, fraud, entrapment, wrongful imprisonment, illegal search and seizure, unlawful surveillance, bribery, extortion and other forms of severe abuse of power.

Why has corruption become so endemic in recent times among our police forces? The first key is the Patriot Act. The Bush Administration literally swept away anti-corruption incentives in favor of ‘anti-terror’ and ‘domestic terror’ incentives, allowing the police in many cases to sidestep the fourth amendment. Many jurisdictions and counties throughout the country took the liberty of interpreting the new rules as they saw fit, conducting their own authorizations of domestic surveillance and using the atmosphere of fear to justify expansion of budgets and more importantly, armaments.

Asshat-In-Chief

The second key was the change in recruiting policies that took place during the Bush Administration, it began with the federal government reducing the standards for military admittance, allowing ex-felons, known hate groups and known members of gangs and organized crime to serve in the ranks during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In many cases these criminals were promoted to higher rank for their willingness to perform acts of violence against civilians that other more tempered soldiers were not. Police departments petitioned the government to lower their recruiting standards as well to permit the entry of these ex-felon soldiers, many coming back with mental duress from combat, into the police forces upon their return home using veteran employment and Iraqi policing experience as a justification. These new officers were far more prone to violence, brutality, corruption and hate than their prior counterparts and many were promoted due to their views on race and domestic policing.

Joe Biden speaking at the National Association of Police Associations

The third key was the continual recruitment of these personalities into law enforcement well after 2008, mainly due to the success of the Fraternal Order of Police in planting their top lobbyist, Senator Joe Biden, into the position of the Vice Presidency. The police union nationwide saw this a carte blanche opportunity to no longer ‘to protect and to serve’ but simply to rule by fear, violence and corruption. This was supported by the fact that Congress obstructed the placement of federal judges by President Obama, and many of the corrupt Bush appointees were able to continue to make rulings that protected the expansion of police misuse of power, including the acquittal of many murderers serving on the force. The ongoing corruption has led to penetration by foreign organized crime organizations, most notably the Mexican Cartels, who have used their newfound influence in law enforcement to expand their power to whole municipalities as shown by DEA research published in 2015.

So now that we know the police forces are riddled with corrupt, war-torn and psychologically unstable officers, let’s focus on their abuse of the medical marijuana industry in both current events and in retrospect:

A recent case, near and dear to our hearts that epitomizes the corruption within policing today. This month Yuba County Sheriff’s Deputy Christopher ‘Mark’ Heath, a veteran narcotics officer of the Yuba County Sheriff’s NET-5 drug and gang task force was caught transporting 200 pounds of medical marijuana, taken from NET-5 raids, in Pennsylvania by a local anti-narcotics task force. Heath was en route to New York, where the medical marijuana could fetch a price anywhere from $6,000 to $8,000 a pound. Heath was looking at anywhere from $1 million to $1.6 million in stolen marijuana profits. Whether other NET-5 or Yuba County Sheriff’s Deputies conspired to assist Heath in transporting is still pending investigation but industry insiders know that this is most certainly the case.

NET-5 is a notoriously corrupt anti-marijuana trafficking task force that has been known to ‘tax’ marijuana transporters and local growers alike for several years now, by conducting raids and seizures in violation of California’s Medical Marijuana Law if growers fail to pay or supply them. Yuba County itself is a sparsely populated farming county with most high paying jobs coming from government work with the local air force base or the county itself. The per capita income rate is about 40% less than the California average and like many parts of California, lower income populations have turned to medical marijuana to relieve the financial stress produced by the outfall of the ongoing financial crisis. Yuba County also sponsors FACT, an anti-marijuana group in the area that documents and publicizes police raids and seizures in the county.

Santa Ana, a city notoriously influenced by Mexican Drug Cartels, not excluding Mayor Miguel Pulido and City Attorney Sonia Carvalho, imposed a state and federally illegal lottery in early February to issue 20 zoning and operating permits for medical marijuana collectives within the city to friends, financial associates and cartel front men associated with Pulido, Carvalho and other members of Santa Ana city council to fast-track their operations and justify the elimination of competition. The Santa Ana Police, since the issuing of these permits, have followed Long Beach’s lead by becoming the Mayor’s personal hit squad for taking out collectives that have taken suit with the city over these illegal measures, using the gang unit and anti-narcotics units to shut down anyone competing against the 20 collectives. In late May, the corruption was unveiled at the Sky High collective when Santa Ana Gang Unit utilized itself as an intimidation force to shut down the collective but was caught on camera conducting the raid, which featured several officers illegally partaking in edibles and stealing product.

Mayor Pulido (right) with his cabal

The illegal lottery occurred as part of Measure BB, sponsored by the City Council, the Santa Ana police and Cartel front men; the cities success at the ballot was in large part due to the mishandling of the counter-initiative by OC NORML, who may or may not have sabotaged their own efforts due to institutional corruption and arrogance. OC NORML suspiciously opened a brand new office in the Downtown district of Santa Ana, without opposition, following the City’s victory, let alone NORML’s reputation for selling out local growers and farms for political influence and funding.

Statements made against the city by OCWeekly Magazine and Attorney Matthew Pappas revealed that “The mayor has a pecuniary interest in [at least] one of the collectives. Prior to the election, there were limousine services and gifts provided to officials. We have evidence of that. People were approached to pay a $25,000 amount and were told they would win the lottery.”

OC Weekly continues:

“Rather than forcing lottery players to go through a lengthy background check, something that might have greatly reduced the number of applications, city officials allowed individuals to submit an unlimited number of applications per location on behalf of various corporate entities. The city’s somewhat-cynical operating theory is that corporations are people, and thus each one, no matter how fictional or freshly conceived or who actually owned it, has the right to its own lottery ball….”

“Predictably, most of the 20 winners were deep-pocketed entrepreneurs, some of whom purchased 100 or even 150 balls to increase the odds of winning. The winners included some high-profile names such as Cypress Hill’s B-Real. Many winners formed legal partnerships, raised money from investors and paid the city with money orders; the Weekly also interviewed eyewitnesses who described successful applicants who drove to City Hall in flashy cars with their girlfriends in tow, hauling shopping bags stuffed with enough cash to purchase dozens of lottery balls.

The Weekly also uncovered allegations of attempted influence peddling by Pulido’s personal attorney and former Orange County Democratic Party chairman Frank Barbaro, as well as aggressive solicitation of campaign donations by both Pulido and powerful Democratic Party operative Melahat Rafiei, whose brother is among the 20 winners. Furthermore, to raise cash for the Measure BB campaign and thus lay the groundwork for the lottery, the city worked with Randall Longwith, a prominent medical-marijuana attorney whose brother-in-law, David Dewyke, happens to manage the Clinic Patient’s Association. The large-scale dispensary operated in Santa Ana without a permit for several years, until it was finally shut down by the police in late May–one of the last such dispensaries left in the city.

Campaign-contribution records obtained by the Weekly show Dewyke was by far the largest contributor to Measure BB, writing checks totaling $57,000–single-handedly footing nearly a third of the roughly $181,000 campaign bill. (Dewyke also gave $10,000 to the Measure CC campaign.) According to limo-company operator and custom-car designer Vini Bergeman–who lives in a 20,000-square-foot mansion in Panorama Heights and is a former associate of John Gotti, as well as a former business partner of Dewyke’s–Dewyke frequently borrowed his vehicles, saying he needed them to wine and dine city officials involved in Measure BB.

Female Officer Who Threatened Patients

The Atlantic Magazine also chimed in by pointing out the presence of corruption in the police union over the marijuana issue and the intended abuse of some of the patients present during the raid:

“On-duty police officers appear to be eating edible pot products—OC Weekly transcribes words they spoke while egging one another on. (“Those candy bars are pretty good,” one said. “I kinda feel light-headed though.”) Other dialogue offers a number of insights into the subculture of this narcotics unit. Take the woman with an amputated leg that police encountered on entering the dispensary. “Did you punch that one-legged old benita?” one police officer asks another. The other cop laughingly replied, “I was about to kick her in her fucking nub.” These are people Santa Ana taxpayers empower to use lethal force at their discretion….”

“What’s new is the way that the cops caught misbehaving on camera and the police union that represents them have responded to an internal police investigation—not with embarrassment, contrition, and public apologies, as would befit trustworthy people of good character, but with shameless, discrediting chutzpah: They’ve sued to keep now public video of their indefensible behavior from their overseers!

A lawsuit, filed last week in Orange County Superior Court by three unidentified police officers and the Santa Ana Police Officers Association, seeks to prevent Santa Ana Police Department internal-affairs investigators from using the video as they sort out what happened during the May 26 raid of Sky High Collective,” the Orange County Register reports. The article goes on to characterize the lawsuit’s claims:

The lawsuit argues that the video doesn’t paint a fair version of events. The suit also claims the video shouldn’t be used as evidence because, among other things, the police didn’t know they were on camera. “All police personnel present had a reasonable expectation that their conversations were no longer being recorded and the undercover officers, feeling that they were safe to do so, removed their masks,” says the suit.

The dispensary also did not obtain consent of any officer to record them, the suit says. “Without the illegal recordings, there would have been no internal investigation of any officer,” the suit says.

To sum up: These police officers are complaining that after rushing into this business with guns drawn, forcing employees outside, and using a crowbar to pry visible surveillance cameras off the walls, they were not warned—by the same employees they forced out—that their efforts to disable all surveillance cameras failed, rendering their decision to eat the business’s products visible to its owners. As well, they’re arguing that, though on-duty cops, they had a reasonable expectation of privacy, having failed to account for their own incompetence at disabling surveillance.

But even more galling is that last bit about how “without the illegal recordings, there would have been no internal investigation of any officer,” as that’s only true if one assumes that all cops present would cover for one another’s egregious misbehavior and sign off on a police report that misrepresented the raid. That isn’t a bad assumption, given that police subculture is rife with cops who fail to report on the misconduct of fellow police officers, but it’s really something to see police officers invoke that reality, even implicitly, in an attempt to wriggle out of accountability.

And most galling of all is the fact that this tactic is going to work temporarily. “A Superior Court judge indicated Tuesday that he plans to issue a temporary restraining order that would prevent the Santa Ana Police Department from using video of officers misbehaving during a pot-shop raid as the department investigates the officers’ actions,” the Voice of OC reports. “According to court documents, Judge Ronald Bauer so far agrees with officers’ claims that they would suffer ‘irreparable harm’ if the department is allowed to use video that the Santa Ana Police Association argues was obtained in an illegal eavesdropping operation.”

Santa Ana Police even went as far as to quash the video for their own internal affairs investigation. Maybe it’s the City of Santa Ana, not the medical marijuana community, that deserves to have an investigation of its own and not just a local one, but a federal one.

Police officers conducting a raid against a marijuana grow site removed marijuana from the scene with permission from the police chief. Unbeknownst to these investigators, the grow has cameras on-site and filmed one officer removing marijuana in bottles of rubbing alcohol. The Department had already been under suspicion of marijuana trafficking for the cartel and a good cop, upon review of the footage, elected to turn in the corrupt cops to the Texas Rangers authority. The police department attempted to cover up the misappropriation leading to a raid by Texas Rangers against the Sullivan City Police Department. The local Valley News tells us more:

“Officer Angel De La Mora grabbed a handful and stuffed the marijuana inside a bottle of rubbing alcohol. “It was a stupid, dumb mistake,” de la Mora said months later during an interview. “But there’s more to it.”Police Chief Miguel Martinez stood by the door, watching de la Mora take handful after handful of marijuana. Police Inv. Reynaldo Cortes also stood nearby, occasionally chatting with the chief. They weren’t concerned about two security cameras that recorded the incident on May 21. If a police sergeant hadn’t tipped off the Texas Rangers, nobody would have missed the marijuana.

“For me, it was more of a Barney Fife deal,” said attorney Ricardo Salinas, who represents de la Mora — referencing the dimwitted but well-meaning deputy from “The Andy Griffith Show.”

“I don’t believe that him or the chief really meant to do anything wrong,” Salinas said. “Ignorance of the law is no excuse, but I don’t think it’s really worth pursuing.”

The Texas Rangers apparently didn’t agree.Nearly three weeks later, the Rangers raided the Sullivan City Police Department and seized the surveillance footage.They also presented Sullivan City with a search warrant that placed the police department on notice: The Rangers believed the incident may have constituted theft by a public servant, a state jail felony, and abuse of official capacity, a Class A misdemeanor. While the raid surprised Sullivan City administrators, problems with the police department aren’t anything new. The troubled police department went through five police chiefs during the past five years. In June 2010, federal agents arrested Chief Hernan Guerra Jr., who pleaded guilty to drug trafficking. Frustrated with city politics, Interim Chief Carlos Lucio left just 14 months later. The City Commission fired Chief Jose Anaya for unprofessional conduct. And Chief Juan Alejandro resigned after Sullivan City administrators asked him to stop sleeping at the department. That left Sullivan City with veteran patrolman Miguel Martinez, who got the top job primarily because the City Commission knew he would stick around.

Constant turnover allowed de la Mora and other officers with questionable records to avoid scrutiny for years. “To me, it wasn’t a police department per se,” said Joe Cantu, a semi-retired Rio Grande Valley lawman who spent a year working for Sullivan City. “It was just a bunch of guys who carry guns and badges and aren’t properly trained.”

Several local officers, including former police Chief Hernan Guerra Jr., have been caught working with smugglers. In June 2010, federal agents arrested Guerra for working with a Tamaulipas-based drug trafficking organization. Guerra helped the organization dodge Border Patrol agents and kept Sullivan City police away from drug shipments. He also rigged city vehicle auctions for drug traffickers. In exchange, the smugglers paid him $500 to $2,000 every month, according to federal court records. He pleaded guilty and received a 10-year prison sentence. “You seemed to scoff, really, at getting caught,” said U.S. District Judge Randy Crane, according to a transcript of the April 2011 sentencing hearing. “You didn’t care. You were going to do it anyway. I remember being appalled listening to some of the things you were saying on wiretaps.”

“Former Sullivan City police Officer Juan Sotelo said he witnessed de la Mora’s dark side on March 10, 2012. While working off-duty security at Jaguars — an Edinburg strip club with nude dancers — Sotelo said he spotted de la Mora. “Officer Sotelo stated that Officer de la Mora was heavily intoxicated and appeared to be under the influence of an illegal substance, due to the fact that he observed a white substance on his nose,” according to records from an internal investigation conducted by the Sullivan City Police Department. Sotelo later filed a lawsuit against Sullivan City, claiming the department retaliated against him for reporting wrongdoing.

His attorney, Javier Pea, provided the confidential internal investigation to KGBT-TV, which independently verified the document’s authenticity. The police sergeant who investigated the incident confirmed Sotelo’s story by contacting another officer who worked off-duty security at Jaguars that night, according to the report. Afterward, the sergeant bought an off-the-shelf drug test from Walgreens and asked de la Mora to submit a urine sample. De la Mora tested positive for cocaine, according to the internal investigation. He resigned effective immediately. However, the Walgreens drug test wouldn’t stand up to legal scrutiny. Sullivan City had botched the investigation.”

Fewer than two months later, de la Mora reapplied to the Sullivan City Police Department. He submitted the standard 13-page job application, which asked: Have you ever used marijuana or any other drug not prescribed by your physician? “Yes,” wrote de la Mora, according to a copy of the application obtained through a public information request. “Cocaine. The situation was an ordeal.” Sullivan City hired him back anyway. Nearly all drug trafficking and immigrant smuggling cases involve cars, Lucio said, adding that the department would file civil forfeiture proceedings against the vehicles. Money from the vehicle auctions funded equipment and other police department expenditures. “Sullivan City can’t support itself on the citations,” Lucio said, referencing traffic tickets. “It can’t. The money is in forfeitures.” For the cash-strapped city, forfeiture funds have become so important the police chief talks with the City Commission about seized vehicles at monthly meetings. “That’s why they wouldn’t let him go: Because the police department is a business,” Lucio said. “And anyone who says otherwise is lying.”

De La Mora went on to claim he was stealing the marijuana for a relative, for medical use but given his track record of corruption, nobody took the bait.

The Drug Policy Alliance made a general comment on asset forfeitures and police corruption stating:

“Ever wonder why police spend so much time enforcing failed drug laws? To find the answer, you just need to follow the money. Funding schemes and asset forfeiture laws have given law enforcement agencies strong financial incentives to continue the drug war. Because funding for drug task forces is often based on the number of arrests made and the amount of property seized in drug busts, the easiest way for local police to up their numbers and boost their careers is to target low-level drug offenders, not violent kingpins. To create arrest opportunities, police routinely rely on untrustworthy informants, conduct dangerous home invasions on flimsy evidence, frame suspects and commit perjury. Asset forfeiture laws allow law enforcement agencies to seize property with minimal proof, putting the burden instead on suspects to prove their own innocence. Because these assets often go straight into the coffers of the enforcement agency, these laws have created financial incentives for property seizures that encourage corruption.”

Phoenix, Arizona – Police & Courts Entrap Medical Grower (2015)

Kyle Catlin

Kyle Catlin, a medical marijuana grower, patient caregiver and medical marijuana activist in the state of Arizona is currently facing trial along with his brother for two cases in Tucson for growing marijuana for sick, elderly and disabled patients. Catlin’s arrest was due to a personal vendetta by local law enforcement authorities, against Catlin’s father a seasoned marijuana veteran who managed to evade arrest and incarceration for several years. The local authorities were so vengeful in going after Catlin that the judge in his trial refused to allow Catlin’s lawyer to reference the state marijuana law. Since Catlin is a state licensed caregiver the marijuana law would have protected his civil rights but the corrupt judge refused to allow the law to be brought into court stating that in Arizona the marijuana law was not an affirmative defense.

According to Tucson Weekly:

“In April 2012, Catlin was pulled over by Tucson Police officers, allegedly for speeding. What really happened, according to Catlin, is a young man had gotten in trouble earlier over having some weed, and he told the cops he had gotten it from Catlin. The police officers interrogated Catlin, and he ended up showing them the two ounces of weed he carried in his backpack (law says you can carry up to 2.5 ounces), and his medical marijuana card. “At some point I asked ‘Am I under arrest?'” he says. “I heard a police officer lie and say that I had said that there were more (marijuana) jars at my house, when I was never asked anything about marijuana at my house,” he says. The cops searched his pockets and found two cell phones and cash, which they saw as sufficient probable cause to search his home.

They found 147 marijuana plants, weed in jars and a gun in Catlin’s safe. Overnight, he was charged with four felonies: possession of weed for sale, attempt production, possession of drug paraphernalia and possession of a deadly weapon during the “commission of a drug offense.” According to the indictment document, law enforcement found more than two pounds, but less than four pounds of weed for each cultivation, production and possession, roughly adding up to 15 years if given the maximum sentence. Marijuana paraphernalia would be at least four months but no more than two years. A grand total of close to 20 years in prison if given the max, according to the marijuana advocacy group NORML.”

Catlin w/patient

“A few months into pre-trial for case one, Catlin’s home was searched again. The investigators overseeing the case found recent information about his healing center— Arizona Medical Marijuana Caregivers—online, and that’s how they justified another search warrant. “They destroyed my house, ripping posters down, and breaking glass water pipes all over the house,” he says. Catlin was pinned with 10 felonies. Among them, “illegally conducting an enterprise that sold and/or possessed for sale amounts of marijuana and cannabis … to customers,” the indictment says. It lists Catlin as the boss, who employed an “associate” to deliver marijuana, and “arranged appointments between the runner and customer for the purpose of selling marijuana.” There was also another charge for possession of marijuana for sale, possession of drug paraphernalia, and conspiracy to possess and sell. “Here I am trying to prove that what I am doing is legal, and I’m getting in trouble. I’m not doing anything illegal, but it appears to (the judge) that I am,” he says. The trial for case one begins on Oct. 13. If he’s found guilty of all or any charge, he’ll face trial two with previous convictions.”

Sheriff Joe

Kyle’s problems are an extension of the municipal and statewide corruption by law enforcement and judicial authorities. Just a little dig into the local marijuana community and we were able to uncover that many Arizona state officials and the local elite have ownership stake in the largest medical marijuana dispensaries in the state and that such persons include famous public figures like Sheriff Joe Arapaio, JP Holyoak of the hedge fund Holyoak Wealth Management, and most notoriously the so called “anti-corruption figure” Representative Ted Downing of Tucson and his relatives. Downing has been perceived as the invisible hand behind Catlin’s trouble in court as Catlin was a direct competitor to Downing’s associated dispensaries in Tucson, Sedona and Cottonwood; he has only admitted to ownership stake in the Sedona dispensary and in a production facility in Cottonwood. Suspicion of Downing has been present ever since the indictment of Downing’s sons for diversion of campaign funds for personal use in 1997 and again in 2011, shattering his anti-corruption image and putting him on the list of corrupt public officials that misuse their political power for personal gain.

Rep. Ted Downing

Other advocates have attempted to speak out against the misuse of authority. The Phoenix New Times primarily blames the regime of Governor Jan Brewer and a rogue AZ DEA in a 2012 article for the stunted growth of AZ’s industry:

“The state of medical marijuana in Arizona is messed up. Governor Jan Brewer partly is responsible for that. After a thin majority of voters passed Proposition 203 in 2010, Brewer canceled the dispensary portion of the program, claiming that state workers would be prosecuted for administering it. A federal lawsuit she filed in May 2011 was an obvious attempt by the Republican marijuana foe to get the law declared unconstitutional. It failed. Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Richard Gama, in examining a lawsuit by would-be dispensary owners, ordered Brewer to implement the program as voters intended.”

Brewer

“A few Valley clubs and/or collectives have been raided by police and shut down. But more keep popping up. At least one, the Arizona Cannabis Society in El Mirage, re-opened after a raid. Prosecutions have been fewer. After the federal Drug Enforcement Agency raided Tempe’s Arizona Go Green Co-op, state Attorney General Tom Horne’s office dropped charges against the owner, James Chaney, and an employee. Bill Hayes, one of the founders of the Arizona Cannabis Society, is yet to be charged after his outfit was busted by Phoenix police in May. And Garry Ferguson, whose Tempe club had the distinction last year of being the first such business to be raided, never was charged.

County Attorney Bill Montgomery, an ambitious conservative who wants the medical-marijuana law canceled by the feds, voters be damned, is moving forward with prosecutions of employees of two cannabis clubs…Montgomery is trying to force the issue, possibly in conjunction with police and the state Attorney General’s Office. Fact is, the question about the legality of the clubs still is to be determined in Arizona, as authorities well know.”

“Despite the threats of prohibitionists, the names of 97 companies and groups that will be authorized to sell marijuana in Arizona were pulled from a lottery-style air-blower by the state Department of Health Services on August 7. The lucky applicants were culled from a total of 426 who each paid $5,000 for the opportunity to be in the running. The losers get $1,000 back.”

Long Beach, California – A Nationwide Model For Police Corruption (2008 to Current)

Mayor Bob Foster

Ah yes, Long Beach; the birthplace of the medical marijuana industries problems.

The City of Long Beach was the first city in the United States to racketeer medical marijuana dispensaries under the architecture of former Mayor Bob Foster, Police Chief Jim McDonnell (now LA County Sheriff), City Attorney (and Irish Mob affiliate) Bob Shannon, La County Supervisor Don Knabe, Attorney Matt Knabe, Business Relations Manager Erik Sund (known KKK affiliate) and the Long Beach Police Officer Association led by Narcotics Detective and underworld killer, Det. David Strohman. Long Beach was formerly the jewel of the medical marijuana industry and the top pioneer in dispensary operation, but this all came to a grinding halt when city insiders became deeply threatened by the level of competition that their own dispensaries faced.

John Morris courtesy of OC Weekly

Mayor Foster, City Attorney Shannon and local OC crime boss John Morris along with local grower Carl Kemp, shared interests in several of the local dispensaries in Long Beach that were not performing well due to the subpar quality of their indoor marijuana. Morris, the notorious owner of Long Beach’s Legends bar in Belmont Shore, peddled his influence to several members of the Long Beach City Council in order to push for an illegal lottery that would determine who would be allowed to stay and who would be forced to go.

*Courtesy of OCWeekly Marijuana Super Investigator Nick Schou:

John Morris (right) partying with Mayor Bob Foster

“His pitch to City Hall: work with someone you know, rather than open the door to strangers from out of town who might turn out to be shady characters. “How are we going to make this truly work in Long Beach so it’s not gangbangers doing it?” Morris figured. “Let’s bring the community into this thing so everyone knows who we are.” Since marijuana collectives aren’t allowed to make a profit in California, Morris says, he planned to open at least four different storefronts throughout the city, each affiliated with a nearby charity, including Long Beach Memorial Foundation; the city’s skate-park program, run by ex-councilman Mike Donelon; and Long Beach Gay and Lesbian Center, whose director, Ron Sylvester, recalls talking to Morris and being excited about the concept. I brought it to our board of directors and got back to John and told him that we’d love to be a beneficiary,” Sylvester says. “I kept an eye on what was happening legislatively, and, of course, we’re disappointed that it hasn’t come to fruition. When he met with city attorney Shannon about the project, Morris brought his lobbyist, Matt Knabe, whose father, Don Knabe, sits on the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors.”

“To create a nonprofit called the Fourth Street Collective at 1069 Wardlow St., Morris reached out to Christine Donelon, wife of the former city councilman who ran the skate-park charity Morris hoped to fund. Another was tax accountant Osvaldo Lainez, who handled returns for both Morris and Dee Andrews, a Long Beach councilman. Lainez is also the president of the nonprofit Chicar, which has won tens of thousands of dollars in Port of Long Beach donations, ostensibly for helping to organize the city’s annual Martin Luther King Jr. Day parade, which is steered by Andrews.”

Bob Shannon

In late 2010, City Attorney Shannon held a rigged lottery in City Council that essentially forced the dispensary owners to bribe the city into retaining their operating permits, in addition requiring a $15,000 application fee. The lottery was immediately legally challenged thwarting the Morris Syndicate’s plans to fix competition as widespread corruption was alleged by other dispensary owners. In retaliation, Morris’s associate Mayor Bob Foster ordered David Strohman of the Long Beach POA to form a special anti-marijuana task force that would begin to raid, shake down and intimidate the dispensaries that dared to defy the illegal lottery.

“Larry Parks, who owned the 1 A.M. collective, [2] first became suspicious about the city’s program weeks earlier, when he paid a $2,000 consulting fee to Morris’ attorney, Violas.

“I wanted to get his thoughts about the lottery process and what he thought my chances were,” Parks recalls. “He wanted me to hire him for $2,000 a month and told me his clients don’t get bothered by the city. He called it ‘good lawyering’ and said he’d need $5,000 here and $5,000 there to spread around.” Violas claimed to be “good friends” with Erik Sund, Long Beach’s business-relations manager and director of the city’s medical-marijuana program. “Mr. Violas told me that if I paid him money, he would be able to guarantee acceptance of my patient-cooperative group’s application for a Long Beach city permit,” Parks later stated in a sworn deposition. “When I asked him how he could do this, he told me . . . my group might have to make monetary contributions to city projects or to city officials.”

“Mike Genera refused to pay the fee to enter the lottery; soon after, the city began sending code-enforcement officers to his collective, threatening his landlord, and issuing him up to $50,000 in fines over a period of several months. The police also showed up and filed misdemeanor charges—violating the city’s marijuana ordinance—against his security guard and manager. “They used every kind of tactic that you can imagine,” Genara says. “It was just so overwhelming.”

Dallas Alexander, who operates the Dank City Collective, also paid only a token fee of $500 to the city, instead of the $15,000. “I was summarily rejected,” he says. Not long thereafter, the police raided his shop while he was on his way to work. “They broke down my door with no warrant,” he says. “They basically robbed me. They took whatever they could in money. I saw Erik Sund walk out with a bag of my merchandise. They arrested three of my people who were working, but they were out in a couple of hours.”

Until she voluntarily closed the dispensary late last year, Katherine Aldrich operated 562 Collective in the north Long Beach neighborhood of Bixby Knolls. She also refused to pay the city’s permit fee and didn’t participate in the lottery. On Feb. 14, 2011, the police raided her collective while she was taking her daughter to the orthodontist. Security footage filmed during the raid shows plainclothes officers accompanied by Sund standing in her lobby. No arrests were made, but Aldrich received a fine. The cops returned again three months later, again without a warrant. When her employees refused to open the safe, police arrested them but left empty-handed. Sund was present for that raid, too.”

Eleven dispensaries immediately found themselves getting served with official city letters demanding $40,000 a month in payments to the City Attorney’s office or face a ‘federal raid’ citing a power to deputize LBPD officers as federal narcotics agents. Strohman and his corrupt POA conspirators began a system of identifying, surveilling, capturing and in some cases assassinating members of the Long Beach and San Pedro marijuana industries including growers, transporters, and dispensary workers alike.

The city’s counterattack came to a grinding halt when they caught the attention of the FBI following the shooting and killing of a corrupt federal law enforcement official, who attempted to kill internal affairs investigators at the Downtown Long Beach Federal Building. According to the LA Times: “ The ICE agent, whose name has not been made public, shot and killed Ezequiel Garcia in February 2012 after Garcia opened fire during a meeting about his job performance. He fired at least six shots at his boss before he was shot dead. Kevin Kozak, the Los Angeles field offices second in command, was severely injured. The shooting left the seventh-floor office in Long Beach riddled with bullets.” This incident sparked a yearlong investigation that disturbed city officials, fearing that their RICO violations of the Long Beach marijuana collectives would be uncovered due to the attention being garnered by the lottery lawsuits. Foster and Shannon’s immediate reaction was to pass a citywide ban on medical marijuana collectives and they entrusted Chief McDonnell and Detective Strohman with carrying out the elimination of over a hundred collectives that operated throughout the city targeting both the collectives, their suppliers and even resorting to intimidating and harming their patients.

Marijuana Super Advocate Joe Grumbine

“According to the lawsuit, one of the officers, Dave Strohman led a team of cops who raided the NatureCann collective on March 21, 2012, using a battering ram to knock down the door. “The police officers entered guns drawn and ordered everyone on the ground,” the lawsuit states. “They immediately arrested everyone (four volunteers) for violating LBMC Chapter 5.89,” the city’s ordinance banning marijuana clubs. The lawsuit adds that Strohman and his team “interrogated those arrested,” then seized “all medical marijuana, cash registers, computers and patients records” and that the club was “utterly destroyed.” Elsewhere, the suit claims Strohman routinely failed to provide exculpatory evidence, such as information showing that the clubs were legal under state law, when filing search warrant affidavits. Another cop mentioned in the lawsuit is Oscar Valenzuela, a detective whose prior claim to fame is star witness for the prosecution against Joe Byron and Joe Grumbine, both of whom have the distinction of being the only Long Beach pot purveyors who were prosecuted for doing the same thing that city-permitted clubs were going, i.e. selling pot. (The two men were convicted, but have won the right to a new trial thanks to judicial misconduct).”

The dispensaries connected to the city were allowed to remain open for a longer duration in order to recover losses and assume profits before the ban became permanently in effect in late 2013. Since that time, Long Beach held city elections in 2014 that were heavily monitored by the marijuana community for anti-corruption. Most notorious was the highly illegitimate election of City Attorney Charlie Parkin, a relative of RICO co-conspirator Bob Shannon, who has continued to hamper efforts to restore medical marijuana within the city.

Councilwoman Price – Drug Crusader

Despite attempts by Councilmen Lena Gonzalez, Suja Lowenthal, Rex Richardson and Mayor Robert Garcia to restore the cities medical marijuana business program they have faced staunch opposition led by former prosecutor, anti-marijuana advocate and racist blue blood Susan Price, representing the wealthy 3rd District; 8th District Councilman Al Austin, who was miraculously elected despite his very public displays of illiteracy at council meetings; 5th District Councilwomen Stacy Mungo, a queen bee follower who was subject to attack ads by Americans For Safe Access during the election and retains a bitter resentment towards the industry and Councilman Dee Andrews of the 7th District who is still trying to cover up his involvement in Mayor Foster’s extortion racket. City Council must have a 6 member majority to pass the marijuana law and the final decision may lie in the hands of new Councilman Daryl Supernaw although it appears he has been negatively influenced by the Suzie Price Clique. There is no doubt that Ms. Price intends to sabotage the medical marijuana program to undermine Mayor Garcia, as it is known that she has made statements in private regarding her desire to become the Mayor of Long Beach. Mrs. Price’s prejudices against marijuana and marijuana patients comes from her deep entrenchment as a prosecutor and her racist attitudes towards the black and Latino communities within Long Beach.

Aaron Herzberg, Marijuana Racketeer in Santa Ana and Long Beach

The opposition to Mayor Garcia’s initiative by Price forced the creation of a highly corrupted city commission, of whose members are dually involved in Mayor Pulido’s racketeering of Santa Ana dispensaries. They seek to reinstate the city insider dispensaries while taking away grow rights from individual patients within city limits. Despite a voter mandate authorizing the restoration of the city’s medical marijuana ordinance, Ms. Price used council procedure to force the commission and stall implementation in order to maintain the ban. Meanwhile, Officer Strohman has successfully eliminated marijuana competition within the delivery serves, and most deliveries now operating within Long Beach city limits are owned by members of LBPD or their children.

The ‘Long Beach Model’ of corruption has been exported to municipalities and law enforcement agencies throughout Medical Marijuana states and this has been seen with the subversion of marijuana law by county and city authorities throughout California, Oregon, Washington, Arizona, Colorado and possibly many more states to come.

Will 2016 be the year when the marijuana industry says enough is enough?

US Surgeon General Backs Medical Marijuana

“…The nation’s top doctor on Wednesday suggested an openness to wider use of medical marijuana, saying the drug might offer some medical benefits. “We have some preliminary data showing that for certain medical conditions and symptoms that marijuana can be helpful,” Surgeon General Vivek Murthy told “CBS This Morning.”

US Drug Czar Approves DC Legalization

“…U.S. drug czar Michael Botticelli, though banned from supporting marijuana legalization due to federal law, says that the nation’s capital should be able to implement its own laws using its own funds, even if that does indeed mean legalizing marijuana…”

Justice Department Goes After Marijuana Mafia in Oakland

“…Lawyers for U.S. Attorney Melinda Haag appeared in court Tuesday in an effort to shut down a medical marijuana collective in Oakland, California, despite federal guidance discouraging U.S. prosecutors from going after state-legal cannabis operations…”

Marijuana Proven To Be Effective Against Depression

“..Research has suggested that cannabis may be a promising treatment option for a number of different physical and mental health conditions, from post-traumatic stress disorder to chronic pain. A study released this week suggests that depression can be added to that list…”

Cannabis Advocate: Ohio Bill Doesn’t Go Far Enough

“…The leader of an Ohio families’ group that has been campaigning to get medical marijuana for sick children said Thursday a bill introduced this week in the state House does not go far enough to provide relief to the ailing…”

Cypress Hill Rapper Wins Marijuana Lottery

“…. Hip-hop group Cypress Hill gained fame in the 1990s with marijuana-themed songs like “Dr. Greenthumb.” Now one of its members might become a real Dr. Greenthumb after he and 19 other applicants won a city lottery Thursday to put them on a path to legally distribute medical marijuana in Santa Ana….”